digital art: ralph murre
ASTRONOMY
by Thomas R. Smith
The unaided eye sees only six thousand stars.
With our best instruments we can, perhaps,
take six thousand galaxies in one gulp of light.
They say the visual frontier of our universe
is now forty-two billion light years.
Are there universes beyond our universe?
At what point do we close the astronomy book
and ask, What have these nebulae and globular clusters,
these star-making dusts of the inconceivable distances
to do with us? The heart wanders
lost
on the white beach of suns in search of
the grain of sand that it calls home.
Breathe deeply. Step back from
the night window
against which galaxies’ moth-wings flutter.
Let God splash day-glo about that vast canvas.
In your own room, with the things you love,
stand among the “pillars of creation.”
You are the place where infinity begins.
~ first published in Poetry
Ireland Review
