Of This Universe

Add a little bI do not think I came from space

I could never be awarded such an honorable grace

Though sometimes I feel it in my veins

As I look upon those eternal flames, Each painting with its own hues

Burning fiery red, glowing the loveliest of blues

That I must have some ancestor, some ascendant

Some ethereal being locked away in a lost pendant, From the rusted, rocky surface of Mars

To each of Orion’s cerulean stars.

From Gioiello’s amethystine sparkle to Saturn’s dancing rings, My soul, transcendent Sings.

I gaze into this dark, eternal, abyss

Not a single fleck, not a single speck is found remiss

And I am Alice through the looking glass

Plucked from the hands of a watch stained brass

Time falls away,

Above me Cassiopeia and Cetus sway

I am of the galaxies, of the nebulas, no matter how far they seem I am of the dust of a star whose beauty now courses through my bloodstream

And though I feel myself to be but a pinprick

There is something within me intrinsic

That belongs to the fierce Aries, the mighty Perseus, That belongs to the noble Andromeda, the mystic Orpheus

And though of these distant places I can only dream, They are a salve, putting my soul at ease.

I know myself a scientist

I know the laws of this existence, inviolate

Thus I know the prodigious time between Myself and all that has been In this galaxy unending,

In this universe that has painted me from the dust of its own stars, each brush stroke delicately blending

The nitrogenous bases of my DNA

The sodium, potassium that light up my neurons as I write this essay, The iron that courses through my very blood

The carbon laced in the very fabric of my being as it treads through the earth’s mud

All was made at the core of a star

So many billions of light years far

So, I think

I very well do come from space!

I am the space I marvel upon As it looks down on me, Like two halves of a mirror

And I see all much clearer, it is so much nearer

The beauty of this infinite universe

Of which I thought myself to be a stranger

Forgive me, for I err!

For it has always been, and always will be Within me.