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Poet’s Respond in Rattle!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on December 14, 2018| 2 Comments »

Hi friends,

 

the poem from a few days ago about the Voyager 2 leaving our heliosphere, “By the Numbers,” was accepted last night by Rattle.com for their series Poets Respond, poems about the news. Here is a link to the text and audio!

 

By the Numbers, Rattle

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By the Numbers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

Two hundred ninety million.

That’s how many dollars Monsanto

was ordered to pay the dying man

 

when the company failed to warn him

about how the poison they made

to kill weeds would also kill him.

 

Two hundred ninety million.

That’s how many miles

the Voyager 2 moves away

 

from the earth every year. And though

it was made to do so—to travel

past our sun’s magnetic field—who

 

could blame it for moving away

from this dying planet at

thirty-four thousand one hundred ninety-one

 

miles per hour. If that number were dollars

today, it would be equivalent to eight thousand dollars

in 1977 when the Voyager 2 was launched.

 

And eight thousand, that’s how many sacred

elephants there were on the banks

of the Six Tusker Lake in the Himalaya,

 

elephants who flew in the air, and sages say

the Buddha himself was once born as son

to the chief of these eight thousand elephants.

 

Yes, sacred and magical things happen here

on the earth, despite the greed,

despite the poison. I was seven

 

when the Voyager 2 left, and since then

it’s travelled eighteen and a half billion miles.

If those miles were pounds,

 

that would equal more than a million

large African elephants, though in all of Africa,

there are only four hundred fifteen thousand

 

elephants left, down from five million

just a hundred years ago. What I am saying

is that as the Voyager 2 enters interstellar space

 

things are strange here on Earth, and we seem

hellbent on our own destruction, but I

am so grateful to be here, still. Even as

 

the Voyager 2 hurtles beyond the heliosphere,

I find myself still falling in love

with the twenty-seven thousand three hundred seventy-five

 

days I have to live,

and the earth’s twelve thousand

species of grass, and the five thousand stars

 

visible to the naked eye and the two hundred six

bones in the body, all of them working to help

us run toward beauty, yes, grateful

 

for two hands to hold one beloved face

and, amidst all this enormity, the absolute absence

of sufficient words to say how holy, how incalculable is love,

 

and how marvelous, really, to stare up

into the familiar night sky and imagine

all boundaries we’re just beginning to cross.

 

 

 

check it out:

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/10/675324587/voyager-2-bids-adieu-to-the-heliosphere-entering-interstellar-space

 

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