Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Tuesday Poem: Stellar Science Fiction

Sometimes when
the paddock gate has closed on day
and dusk’s fence
has culled the colours from the sun

I watch the mother of all musters
graze the night.
My childhood questions long ago
re the stars

and their what and why and when
are answered now
with quasars, crabs, quarks and holes.
But these don’t hold a candle

to the stories told me then
of angels tending flocks
of fireflies
across the fields of heaven.


When the priest who married my wife and me heard I wrote poetry, he asked me for a poem to put in his parish newsletter. I sent him this.

Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.

11 comments:

  1. Just lovely. There's an old Australian poem that characterises the stars as flocks of sheep which I could dig up if you're interested.

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  2. Sweet - particularly love the firefly mention.

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    1. Ah, fireflies in a black grotto - a parallel universe. Thanks Alicia.

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  3. So quietly meditative - I keep coming back to the image of 'dusk's fence'. Really love the scope of this - handling something so immense in such a delicate way. Thanks for sharing, Keith :)

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    1. Attempting to explain the inexplicable without resorting to science almost demands poetry, don't you think? Thanks Elizabeth.

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  4. I like how this crescendos so quietly to the end. Lovely and reflective. I like quiet poems like this - they tend to stay with me.

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    1. And I love the "quiet...crescendos" - that will stay with me. Thanks Michelle.

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  5. Yes, the science is fascinating too, but sometimes we do lose some of the "wonder" of being able to look up and simply speculate: when the "what if" becomes simply the "what."

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  6. Lovely poem, Keith. One from the heart.

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