Home » Poems » David Welch » What a Great View

What a Great View

I stand atop a mountain tall,
look down upon the land,
the forests clinging to the slopes,
green valleys long and grand.
Rivers carve torrents right through them,
can still hear them up here,
cabins scattered amongst the woods,
one such belongs to me.
Some wonder why I walk up peaks,
why I deal with that strain,
the only view that is better
would be from an airplane.

I am jammed in a window seat,
thirty thousand feet high,
the Great Lakes stretching below me,
almost as blue as sky.
There’s boats I see amongst the wave,
but they're actually ships,
trawlers and freighters loaded down,
doggedly make their trip.
The gray of cities on the shore,
suburbs encircle it,
the only view that could beat this
would be up in orbit.

I look out the capsule window,
five hundred miles high,
amazed by fringe of black and blue
where the great void meets sky.
The clouds a frosting, wispy white,
obscuring land and earth,
on the night side a web of lights,
the cities' yellow blur.
Beyond me a spangled starfield
stretches on endlessly,
to see greater you would have to
leave the dang galaxy.

I stare down on the spiral arms
of the grand Milky Way,
Bound loose around a brilliant core
where countless bright stars blaze.
Reaches of stars drifting about
in graceful, curving arcs,
billions of stars and their planets,
defy the endless dark.
The nova and the nebula,
so beautiful it hurts,
to see better you would have to
know the whole universe.

I gaze down on the great clusters,
light dots looks like a star,
but each is a whole galaxy,
Lord, how many there are!
Swinging around in massive groups,
too big to comprehend,
I can’t try to make sense of this,
it’s just too big for men.
My mind says that there’s nothing more,
I’ve reached the end, must quit;
but part of me thinks something else
must be bigger than this.

…and won’t that be cool to see.

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