Our Neighborhood

During my long short lifetime
the Milky Way’s become
more visibly grand,
more viewably accessible.
While the pale blue dot of my home
has seemed to shrink
to a precious gem.

In the Milky Way, every day
is a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Friendly arms are always waving.
We do, of course, live at the edge
and we’re not yet old enough
to cross the street,
but it’s easy to see even from here,
it’s a neighborhood to be proud of.

All those solar systems
in our hometown galaxy!
Why, in our little Orion arm,
already we’ve discovered 500.
Tens of billions, astronomers say,
maybe 100 billion, each with at least one
spinning shelter
like our own familiar Earth.

And oh, that glitzy black attraction
at our neighborhood’s core—
I hung a lovely photograph
of its event horizon
right above my bed for dreaming—
like a singular fissure in the game of Crack the Whip,
where, when we run for the wormhole break,
it laughs and keeps us on the other side.

I know I brag, and well,
I’m sure those other neighborhoods
are fine for those who live in them.
Andromeda I’ve seen with my naked eye,
and telescopes can offer
another 10 thousand hoods.
But really, admit it, no other can compare
with the streaming pour of our Milky Way.

Since we started looking outward,
our house of earth feels smaller.
But oh, the multiplying of muscle granted
by the Neighborhood Association.
Let’s join, I say. And when we sign on
to what is grander than our precious shelter,
something extra, unexpected, happens:
joining up inverts the telescope!
And shows our whole blue Gaia dot
as one gorgeous Being.

©Susa Silvermarie 2020