Failing Astronomy

. . . and dealing with young adult children

Some of my early poems (in books now out of print, in online magazines that have disappeared into the ether) contended with my feelings about the general rebelliousness of our then-college-age children. Those feelings are now part of the deep past, but I can easily recall the self-questioning of that time, which lies behind this poem and others like it.

Not in Our Stars

A wrongheaded choice, I see now,
to search the stars, but know too little of stars—
the times when I lay, impatient
beside a sleepless toddler,
waiting for the even breathing that would release me,

and peered through frost-ferned windows
imagining I could see the belt of Orion,
while in the sky behind me
Orion, a hundred eighty degrees around,
stood winking at my nebulous hold on facts.

And later on, when I sat grade-schoolers down|
in front of Nova, reverent,
and scattered NASA photos like cupcake sprinkles,
my head was still in the clouds
(though they hid the comet, that freezing night in the schoolyard)—

What business did I have
aiming the star-eyed young at physics departments,
at nights in mountain observatories
listening for beings who might not even have breath,
when all I want from the night
is whatever the psalmist heard, that shout of glory?

I know this much: the cosmos
is flying apart. The old drift off the signal.
The children have reached lightspeed.
The galaxies move away
in search of work in a more exciting city.

(first published in Astropoetica, in the book Breath Control)
(photo by Till Credner - AlltheSky.com, CC