Gravitas … (another poem)
June 7, 2008
It is 5:30 AM
A white new moon plate is embossed, lower left
Onto a trembling shimmering pinky sky
We know the Sun is coming … just as we know
That the white moon is wedded to this Earth
I think of gravity.
This is the last new moon of May
Swirling around our planet
Pulling on Gaia
Creating slow tides and new growth. Pulling.
Pullling up and toward
I think of magnetic force.
That moon magnet to Earth.
Is it positive or negative? Or negative to positive?
Who is which, which is who?
Or, is it gravity, not magnets, alone, pulling on us?
What is it that pulls the tides and the plants UP?
I do not know. How this works.
The moon’s elliptical path is constant.
Speed and distance are constant. The same trajectory daily.
Whirling around this twirling Earth.
Does the moon twirl on its axis too?
Or does it travel inert?
I do not know. I know I really should.
And the Sun tipping the horizon now
A brilliant bead of fire, arching up
Turning the sky crimson where it touches
WHY do the earth and the moon not
Hurl towards the Sun’s greater gravity?
I do not know. I really do not know. But I know I really should.
We twirl, daily, in an elliptical orbit around the Sun
Speed and distance constant. The moon twirls on around us.
All twirl on fixed trajectories
In a precise gravitational geometry, a taut whirl of push and pull
Gravitas and Magnets. Push and Pull. Sun and Moon. Earth. And us.
All hurling through the vast heavenly hemispheres
… unimaged and unknown.
Admit it.
It remains a somewhat fantastic and mystifying miracle …
Even in our techno know-knot age and era
Admit it.
