Ancient Light
A story inscribed in the constellations
of the punctate canopy of night
Perseus astride the winged Pegasus
Hurtling to save his fair maid Andromeda
from the beastly Cetus the seasick sea-serpent
While her folks, Cepheus and Cassiopeia
gawk dispassionately
Poor parenting enshrined above us
The pancaked 2-D IMAX look
of the heavenly vault
belies the relevant numbers—
Trillions, quadrillions of 3-D miles between,
My retinas bathing in light decades old
Not a preschool connect-the-dots
but a giant mobile
of impossibly remote thermonuclear furnaces
turned cosmic Rorschach test
My eyes drink the mother of pearl
galactic smudge in the telescope
and I feel you gaze right back
Ancient light, yet a staring presence
a Mexican standoff of unfathomable dimensions
Telescopes at 600 hexillion paces, pardner
Don’t blink
Is it my imagination, or your mind?
Crazy quarks’ quantum entanglement
making instant “spooky action” at a distance
40 million light years away
Hundreds of quintillions of miles
whatever in God’s name that is
There you are again; I feel you
Verizon Universal Consciousness Connection
That’s going to be a heck of a phone bill
but I’ll be long gone by then
I think
8/1/16
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