I got up early to try to see the eclipse this morning, but, once again, I was shut out by clouds. Eclipses are fascinating events the astronomical and astrological communities. This particular eclipse occurs at the North Node, which is currently in the sign of Gemini. Its extra special cause the ruler of Gemini, Mercury is also in the sign. There’s so much going on in the sky right now and over the last couple years. It’s amazing time to really dig into astronomy and astrology because the heavens are so active. I wrote this poem years before I really became interested in either astrology and/or astronomy. I have always loved space and loved learning about the planets. I was just flipping though a magazine one day and say this amazing picture, which I wish I could find on here, that showed a ‘star nursery,’ at ‘Lagoon Nebula.’ My mind just went into overdrive. The picture was so pretty. Then I thought about how we exist because of one star, how amazing and complex we are, and this was a picture of a nursery of stars. It was just amazing. The idea of like a maternity ward of stars. I stared at it. I wondered what it would feel like to float through it. I pictured there being some sort of angelic creatures or forces who are like the nurses that oversea the baby stars. My. mind raced with images of what it would be like to be the force that tended to ‘baby stars.’ Stars that would grow to create their own galaxies. It was just mind blowing to me. Of course, when my mind is blown by something that usually means a poem is on its way. Today, in the spirit of the eclipse I did not see, I’ll share this poem instead.
Moving Through Lagoon Nebula
Located in the constellation Sagittarius, in
the direction of our Milky Way galaxy’s central bulge,
it’s as if somehow we fell into a three dimensional oil mark
that makes those pretty rainbows on the cement.
Except it’s dense, almost thick as oil is. It’s lagoon
sized and your lungs breathe confidently. It’s like
pneumonia breathing after the nebulizer treatment. Clear.
You inhale and the feeling you get the first day of the year
that you’re able to keep your windows open all night comes in.
You are in a colossal stellar nursery, fifty five light years wide,
twenty light years tall. So much space dedicated
to birthing light. The colors are so spectacular,
they hum the most self-soothing lullabies. You are
floating in the warmth of interstellar amniotic womb.
It’s so warm and inviting, you can’t help but do somersaults,
flips, behave like a child the first time you were in a pool
free of your gravity, confident in your ability over the water.
There is no wrong direction. Every choice
leads to more images of birth. The meditation class
you worked so hard not to sleep through, the mindfulness
activity, you actively worked so hard to control your mind through,
the moments you tried so hard to slow down in to
really take them in and speed them up in the process. They are
gone. There is only now here. In a nursery kingdom of light,
everything is newly formed, untouched, unable
to be ‘wrong,’ in any manner. We can feel the grace
of our own bodies. Here, we see no life is accidental.
Everything is born to the silence of perfection.
Each nebula is one defiant prayer of beauty,
incubating, growing ever stronger to become light,
which is the voice, the poetry, inside a universe of dark matter.
Thousands upon thousands incubating in the warmth around us,
preparing to bring the audacity of words, with that
the truths, the music, the prayers, the protests, the poetry,
the tears that come from words
when they remind us, we are all made of light.
Light that was born without any hesitation of it’s own divine perfection,
in a place like this, so calm; it’s like falling asleep
over and over in the arms of someone who looks into your eyes
as you drift off to sleep and knowing by their eyes,
they have never loved something more than they do in that moment.
We sleep knowing, each time they see us
their ability to love has grown.
Oak Roads: Poetry and Musings 