Vera Rubin—astronomer, galactic observer
The astronomer puts her eye to the telescope.
From that clean prism, she sharpens
to a planet barnacled with one trillion stars.
In the black fringe, Andromeda’s rotations are velvet,
obstinate, unending. But why
would the twist pull the same
on the outside when the hitch belongs
at the center? Female, she knows to be focused
on edges. From the luminescent spume, her eye goes
again toward robust obsidian.
All my life, I was taught distance
wasn’t a view but the daisies
in front of me. All my life, distance—
the wrong sort of discipline. Until I was given
to lodge in a place much like a void
and learn it filled a hole I had known
even then was not shapeless.
Vera settles her sight in the sky’s thick laboratory.
Through curve after curve of the spectrum,
galactical gleaming. She bends forward and studies
the facts, relentless. The ring of stars
is a crystalline decanter, but she goes beyond,
to reckon that solemn darkness. The astronomer sees
how to see what is not light. Orbit not in the picture.
The more less, the more stimulation.
In some drizzly minutes, I took the trail at the edge
of this village. Long sensitive rivers that would thin
later in the summer were now rushing
volatile, full of their influence.
