Driving in a roast red desert
Headlights staring into primeval dark
The untrammeled sky glorious
Above us a bridge of stars
Rivering between rocky horizons
At once near and so very far
Cricking my neck to see
I bounced around the back of the open jeep
Absorbing, amid the shudders, splendor
Star birth and death, worlds hidden by distance
Great glowing nebulae
Fat in the centre, a devouring black hole
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
And we stand upon this globe
Asking of the Universe
What?
Recognition?
Salvation?
Whatever you please
In it’s glory
(Shown by our ingenuity and craft
As we build orbital telescopes)
The Universe does not need us
Unless as an observer
Are we here simply to watch?
Look up, look up
Glory awaits
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Here is a poem by Louis Faber that I would like to share with you. You can find it (and many other good poems, including some great science ones) at https://anoldwriter.com/
Boundary
What is on the other side
of this wall that is just
too tall to peer over?
No one seems to know,
though many have surmised
it is a completely different world
looking little or nothing
like the one we inhabit.
Last week a young man
picked up a ginkgo leaf
and said “ahah, it is Japan
across that wall,” but we
mostly thought he was crazy.
Once, when the world was flat,
people knew if you sailed
too far you would fall off.
But the brave ones then
always wondered what sort
of world existed on the other side,
was it desert or tropical jungle
and when it was night here
was it day there or did the sun
simply sleep for ten hours?
This morning a young man
leaned a tall latter
against the wall and slowly
and carefully slipped over the top.
We shouted after him, asking
what it was like: did rainbows
look the same, was grass green,
but all we heard was his
retreating footfalls, and
his plaintive voice shouting:
“Eve, are you here?
I have the apple.”
Louis Faber
