Space - Bill Denham

[Larry Robinson]

Space—
                  through the eye of the Hubble
 
                        I
 
I caught her eye—
            for a split second—
            deep and black as space,
            as she caught mine
            and spoke the words, “Thank you.”
            And in that instant, in that blackness, I saw the universe,
            as if my eye were Hubble itself, 
looking deep to the very edge of things,
            as if I had no choice but see her sorrow, 
her beauty, as she saw mine—
            in an instant.
                              
                        II
 
It was imperfect, at first,
            the Hubble and one might argue, still,
            as the images it receives and passes on
            bend and stretch our psyches
            as if we too were made of light,
            push us into that cloud of unknowing
            where words fall weightless
            and awe is all
            there is—
            and mystery.
            And so we feel
            the beginning,
            we feel 
            our heart
            break open. 
 
III
 
It was the most mundane of encounters.
            I had held the door for the wheelchair bound
            elderly man, I took to be her husband—
            nothing strange, what anyone might do.
            But the moment was not ordinary.
            We were coming, all of us, from the same place.
            And though we were strangers
            and likely to never see one another again,
            we had shared an hour 
            that left us, at once,
            profoundly different 
            and exactly the same.
We had born witness
            to the birth of stars—
            star nurseriesthey were called,
            giant nebula given ancient names like Carina,
            the ship keel constellation of the southern sky
            within which mountains and canyons
            of frozen gas and dust might rise or fall 
            near twenty trillion miles—
            one called Mystic Mountain
            whose double spires
            are topped by infant stars
            flinging their signature streamers of gas
            untold distances into the heavens . . . 
oh, my . . . oh, my . . . how even this attempt 
            to restore a speck of weight to our words falls short
            and we are left, as if our hearts were supernovae
            blown wide open and brilliant
            before fading toward death.
 
                        IV
                                  
And so it was as we left the theater,
            my dear companion weeping
            and I nearly so, 
            stood in the corridor
            unable to move 
            toward the stairs
            when a group
            approached,
            led by the
            fallen patriarch,
            pushed in his wheelchair
            by one I thought to be his daughter,
            flanked and followed by several others
            and finally the wife and mother
            whose small stature belied
            the universe I found
            in her eyes.

	- Bill Denham
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