The heavenly clock turns on, and Jerry Cimisi – in October I found a poem he had sent me some years earlier – has sent two more.
Passage
Just as the leaves fall gradually
Until one day after a rain
They appear, sudden geometries on sidewalks,
Bringing what had been above, below,
In the nights the Summer Triangle
Sets earlier and Orion ascends
At the hour before sleep. With our lights and cities
This season-turning might be unseen;
But I have a need for old things:
From fields I can mark this passage,
And even in cities one catches the insistence
Of a bright star – and knows Earth still moves
Through its celestial years,
Allowing me vision into the billions of eons
That our flesh knows only for decades
And yet receives this passage so beyond our time,
That above world flowed into our life below.
– October 31, 2016
Orion
It’s done. Orion is free
From the houses and trees at dark:
The climbing legs of the hunter, the angled body
Arc’d with Sirius, Procyon, Castor, Pollux, Aldebaran
Like the sweep of an astral sea coast,
Stars the names of magic shouts.
And tells us the cold will come. As if
This beauty had to bring this hardship
To the flesh. We are given, and we sacrifice:
In the austerity of winter the roiling nuclear lights
Are to us gems without warmth – yet they possess
Our myths of journeys and gods: old stories
We can be forgiven to yet mark,
If without worship; still, though, with awe.
– November 17, 2016
Jerry Cimsi has made words visually rich and infinite at the same time! Thank you Guy, for sharing more beauty
Finally, some words to match the sights and feelings of the night sky! Thank you! Recent discussions here about the value of liberal arts versus STEM. Clearly we need poets and artists to help us fully understand and appreciate the science behind what we see around us.
Hi Dewayne, saw you on this post, not surprised you read Guy. He’s great! Hope you are all well, happy New Year!
Thanks for everyone’s appreciation. Loving both astronomy and poetry since I was young, it gives me the greatest pleasure to weave the two. And what’s more poetic than the celestial?
Lovely…
Love both poems, the second one especially. It reminds me of the first time I was at a far enough south latitude in winter to see Canopus for the first time. I was admiring Orion rising over the ocean, then Sirius, then seeing something unusual rise. Ha – I’d only seen Canopus on star charts, so it was quite exciting.
Still, though, with awe.
Yes, indeed. thank you Jerry and Guy for sharing these poems. They are balm for my troubled soul.