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| M78: Stardust and Starlight, Stephan Messner |
Galaxies swirl
Stardust gathers
Dark matter eludes
and carolers still sing.
Star of wonder, star of night
Could our yearning, straining for hope
Lead us to look up and look out for a moment?
Behold. A shooting star passing by, cold crispness of indigo sky
Could this one tiny streak from afar yet massive blaze
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| Sightings of the shooting star were reported over Ireland April 2009 |
rest over one heart, emblazon one mind, embolden one life?
Sands of desert wars
Jungle atrocities
Unspeakable inhumanity
Rubble of crushed neighbors
Shrieks of women torn apart
Whimpers of children lost in the night or
Blasted away, blown apart by through the sleek, slim steel barrels of broken boys
or men of the darkness
Sobs and tears of rainbow parents; red grandmas, orange uncles, violet sisters,
sapphire brothers, emerald gramps and golden aunties
All seep into one brown mush of muddy sorrow.
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| Obsidian in the rough |
Where is star wonder in the midst of the night?
How will the stardust call human souls
from the brink of despair?
No eye can see, no ear can hear it – the answer, no mind can conceive
The reply. Only known in the beauty of quartz sugar sand’s
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| Silica sand |
Melt, 4,172° intense fire, a kiln of hope, forged in the furnace of faith,
caldron of caritas
Into the clarity of crystal – clear, pure, luminous and lovely.
Here, we cling to the notion that the Holy One of galaxies far flung and all beyond
Fashions splendor out of the feet of sandy clay, broken shards of our own destruction
Piece by piece, sliver by sliver burned into glass
into which epiphany breaks forth, flickers of light
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| Glass blower Robert Gary Parkes, Marion McChristall |
Shining
Out of the grim
grime and grit of our sharp, jagged edges
Our fragments
Our torn dreams
The shattered mess
of us
Out of this muddle does the light still shine,
Still.
Holy.
Wondrous.
In the night.
In us.
Jayne M. Thompson © 2013
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| Persian Ceiling by Dale Chihuly, Seattle, WA, Elaine Thompson AP |
