Love and Saturn

Saturn's moon, Daphis, tugs at particles in Saturn's ring and creates ripples. The moon's shadow is that spike at lower right, but the disrupted particles, above the plane of the rings, leave shadows too. The rings are only about 30 feet thick, Daphis is about 5 miles across. (Tom Harnish)

Love and Saturn
by Gideon Burton

As though an errant comet came so close
to Saturn that it skimmed its glowing rings,
then plowed a rippling wave across those rows
of fragment moon shards-- hear the gases sing
as methane ice and iron scramble bands
of colors into graying clots of rubble,
igniting sparking embers in the grand
rotation which for eons knew no trouble.
So you have come, disrupting all my patterns,
disorbiting me with your fiery force.
I dart about like Mercury, not Saturn,
and everything is suddenly off course.
     Astronomers in gaping awe are jealous:
     if only those who loved them were as zealous.

Photo: flickr - TailspinT

Before Newton

Before Newton
by Gideon Burton

Before we knew the measuring, before
the calculus of gravity, when mass
was celebrated, not inert, when more
was known through silent mysteries unasked--
The cosmos turned along the axis, earth,
the sable silent ether held the stars,
which smiled or frowned at every human birth,
and few there were who dared to pause and parse.
Astronomers have architected breadth
and depth, unclasped the boundaries of space,
and to old verities have handed death,
with dust and radiation in their place.
     How easily the heavens lost their grasp
     When little man thought he was big to ask.

Photo: flickr - Lynn (Gracie's mom)

Veil

Veil
by Gideon Burton

For eons an existence without end
until an end, a goal, a destination,
and to that spinning wanderer descend
toward fantastic futures, higher stations
the other side of birth and work and sense
and senselessness by groaning grace and strife.
Condition: we would not have the defense
and comfort of that rich, receding life.
For modesty, a veil, a way to hide
all beautiful security -- our past,
our billion friends. The smoky cosmos glides
before our planet, bound by forces vast.
     Eclipsed, cut off, oblivioned in flesh,
     we face the veiling sky, we pray, we press.

Photo: flickr - .Andi.

The Shining One

The Shining One
by Gideon Burton
after D&C 88:6-13

The Shining One, because he has ascended,
ascended from the depths where he descended;
he spans the frame where timelesses is ended
and having all transcended, comprehended.
This is the light of Christ, the son of suns
and master of the monthly moons that run
against the ermine fields of stars begun
in aching eons past when Jesus spun
the elements, the cosmos kindled bright
brought forth from brooding bosom depths divine
to shine again, again against our night
and spangle gracious knowledge, godly wine
cascading liquid light from God's abyss,
eternities with words as brief as this.

Photo: flickr - Lynn (Gracie's Mom)

---

D&C 88:6-13

He that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth; which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ. As also he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made. As also he is in the moon, and is the light of the moon, and the power thereof by which it was made; As also the light of the stars, and the power thereof by which they were made; And the earth also, and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand. And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings; Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space— The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.

Sacred Rivers of the Moon

Sacred Rivers of the Moon
by Gideon Burton

The moon is full of sacred rivers, soft
as light. Their currents twist along the rim
of yawning craters, breaking past the brim
in slow parabolas that reach across
the quiet chasm, mingle here aloft,
then sink along the pores of rain to skim
the surfaces of night. Our time is thin,
the cool of evening wanes, its dryness lost,
and should the streams of gibbous moonlight fail,
no rapids will announce that desert sea,
no swelling flood will signal us to leave
our caves, to press our faces in the sails
of holy vessels, liquid in their creed,
to board and launch before the day can grieve.

Photo: flickr - Arnett Gill

Io, Passing

Image: Cassini Imaging Team, NASA

Io, Passing
by Gideon Burton

Observe her passing Jupiter again,
a ball of spouting lava, spitting fire,
and yet a silent pebble on a wire
before the giant's curling, swirling blend
of yellow hydrogens and gassy bands
of cloudy helium in ragged spires,
with marbled methane thickening entire
sea-skies dense with hurricanes, with strands
of cosmic elements preparing time
for marking once the smearing ruddy rage
has settled into orbits, cycles, coils
of wanderers upon their lonely climb
toward the meaning of an eon's age.
For this, the minion moon attends and boils.

Kingdoms Many

Kingdoms Many
by Gideon Burton
after Doctrine & Covenants 88:37

No portion unapportioned, worlds on end,
No space without a kingdom large or small,
Nor kingdom absent space where matter spends
Its gravity and energy, its tall
And broad expanse of hot and breeding light.
And yet across creation, strictest walls
Divide each realm from realm as wrong from right.
The emptiness must answer as He calls
For order, lines and clarity and form,
The elements obedient in rows
Of ready molecules. Not even storms
Will disobey the ordered ebb and flow.
     Let lightning burn, the stirring waves compound,
     The dawn must tune with silence all its sound.

Photo: flickr - Andy Saxton2006

---

"And there are many kingdoms; for there is no space in the which there is no kingdom; and there is no kingdom in which there is no space, either a greater or a lesser kingdom." (D&C 88:37)

Star Sea

Star Sea
by Gideon Burton

The islands multiply across the sea
Of stars, the refuges of time made safe
By mute philosophers who left their caves
Of thought and sailed and settled galaxies.
There are no vessels fashioned silver-white,
No rockets launched with crudest pulsing flame,
No ships to seek the depths that have no name,
No soaring plane to reach those distant heights--
For these, the archipelago of wonder,
One needs a field devoid of city light,
An hour gazing upward, till one's sight
Adjusts to cosmic storms of ancient thunder.
     It's then we navigate with sextant sure
     What others know as only haze and blur.

Photo: flickr - Chaval Brasil

Cosmic Skeptic

Cosmic Skeptic
by Gideon Burton

With little lenses pointed to the sky
we calibrate the universe and know
its origin and destiny. With dry
equations tallying the cosmic glow
of supernovae, all that dust and time
and space beyond all measuring of space,
and we unable anywhere to climb
except from rock to pebble. Yet we face
the past and future, scooping every gram
and ray and eon, everything toward
a set of numbers countable by man,
in confidence though all has been ignored
except our sets of observations, graced
with certainties. Our faith has been misplaced.

Photo: flickr - rickz

Still Life: Woman and Blue Marble

I came across this photo posted by Douglas Wheelock, one of the NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station. He took this of a crew member,  Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, who returned to Earth after six months in space in September, 2010.

Image: Astro_Wheels via twitpic

Still Life: Woman and Blue Marble
by Gideon Burton

She'd walked in space, an engineer, afloat
above the metal pods and trusses, far
above the humid atmosphere, thin moat
of air dividing most of us from stars.
How easy to recede into the black,
that deep-dark silent cold beyond outside
where gamma rays and meteors attack,
and yet, like gods, the astro-sailors glide.
As though upon a river bank she lay,
unhurried by the passing of the day,
content to hear what stream or sky might say,
she followed drifting clouds where they might stray.
     Be still as she, absorb the poetry;
     and with her walk in space and sky and sea.

Orbiting

Orbiting
by Gideon Burton

This wobbling mass, the wandering way of it,
the spinning, whirling on this windy wet
and island place, this globe, this fleck of spit,
perfecting what the vacuum can't perfect,
revolving through the comets' arcing lanes.
The Local Group, the spread of sputtering lights
too distant, quiet to collect remains
of errant gases, rocks. These are the rites
effected, bead thumbed after bead, the chant
of rhythms muter than the oldest span
of cooling lava underneath the land
oblivioned beyond our woman-man.
The ration carved, remainders multiply;
a future past our waking, though we try.

Photo: flickr - Brian Finifter

The Things of God

The Things of God
by Gideon Burton
"The Things of God are of deep import, and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out." --Joseph Smith

If in my two score years and few one thing
(perhaps of all my thoughts the soundest yet)
I'm certain of: the ignorance I bring
in widening arcs -- yet nothing to regret.
As wiser I become I lose my place
so often in those softened theorems I 
had thought were permanent. So little trace
remains of mastering the earth or sky.
I am a walker underneath the waves
of eons intricate with lore untried.
I hardly know how anything behaves --
much less the cosmos boundless, black and wide.
     The things of God -- I shudder to behold;
     too green to fathom fathoming so old.

Photo: flickr - Carl Jones

Blink

Blink
by Gideon Burton

A world appears and disappears. Observe
the cosmos blush and crest and burst alight
with radiance and night. The comets swerve
and circle, suns grow dim in embered flight;
they turn, returning, churning fresh the coal
reluctance of the waving curtains' mass, 
deep wells of gravity and time. A bowl
of water quivers, blue and brooding, vast
enough for microbe mammoths, insect whales
and here and there an eon like a tide
flows ebbing, ups the ante and the scale,
geographies and centuries collide.
     Then man appears and lingers for his day,
     and in a hiccup vanishes away.

Photo: flickr - TimOve

Escape

ESCAPE
by Gideon Burton 

Forget the atmosphere, it is a skin

Of moistened molecules, a slab of heat

And dirt that hems you in, that slowly pins

You to the muddy surface where you eat

The wan pollutions and the heavy breeze

Of broad decay across the tribe of breath

Who chomp and puke and ever cough and wheeze

Until they cloud their time with signs of death.

Remember just the cleanliness of space,

Beyond that sticky sphere of sweat and gloom,

Where nothing heaves its germs into your face

And all will find such distance, blessed room.

       Escape the bounds delimiting your role.

       Into the vacuum launch your tired soul

Photo: flickr - colinjcampbell

Witness

Witness
by Gideon Burton

To witness, watching all the cosmos spark
and pulse when little breezes bend the petals,
or children's fingers hold you in the dark,
or leaves submit, dissolve as Autumn settles;
To witness, tasting Winter in the water
the hush along the skin from cotton's touch;
to see the goddess in your wailing daughter;
to sleep and wake and know it is enough.
To witness, speaking all the waking wonders:
I've heard the crickets, smelled the amber dusk,
I've tasted rain and trembled in the thunder,
I've chewed the rinds and cracked the stubborn husks.
     To witness us, his scattered, scabby seed:
     His sacrifice, His soul, His love, our need.

Photo: flickr - feelmystic

The Measure of All Things

The Measure of All Things
by Gideon Burton

How could we be the measure of all things?
With time and space, we've learned that time and space
outrace, outreach the instruments we bring.
Infinities surround our petty race,
and all of our devices only show
how crude and small and transient humans are.
We map and mark the worlds above, below,
our wooden slides rule metering the stars;
with confidence assert the mass of time,
the warp and woof energy and matter.
The quantifying stairs are set to climb;
omniscience just a rung atop a ladder.
     We probe, we scan, anatomizing wonder;
     cold math to mask an exponential blunder.

Photo: flickr: aldoaldoz

Not Infinite

Not Infinite


by Gideon Burton

It isn't infinite. I've touched the edge,
the outer boundary, its fraying threads;
I've plumbed the mud that eons couldn't dredge
and found the fissures' fissures where they spread.
Can one abyss enfold more darkened mists?
An ocean's wrapped a cosmos in its flow;
the galaxies enclose in bulbous cysts
beneath a skin so vast one cannot know
the limits circulating, network red
returning down the corridor, benign.
How cold to hold the dryly caking mud,
until a golden thread expands its line.
     We spin, we spin and turn our heads on cue,
     unable to confess the mess that's true.

Photograph: flickr - thelastminute

For Ptolemy

For Ptolemy
by Gideon Burton


What if Copernicus himself were wrong
About the earth and sun? How many men
Or women skyward turn and study long
With instruments and charts so they'll know when
A tiny prick of light unravels all?
Or who have tamed the mysteries of math,
Abstractions that themselves cast deeper pall
Than midnight's starry field? A limpid bath
Of noonday light reveals our center sure,
Around whose fixed seat the sun, the moon
To billions have portrayed their coursing blur.
To say we turn around the sun, what boon?
        We bow to learned men and to their books,
        Though they defy how plain the cosmos looks.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr- Carolune

Light Years

Light Years
by Gideon Burton

How is it that our ranging minds across
Both time and space can freely, widely roam,
As though it lay within our means to toss
The years of light aside as waves do foam?
The tides of sluggish time for us will rise
But half a sigh and then return us low
Despite those worlds we compass with our eyes,
Regardless where our starry dreams will flow.
My grandfathers, like distant planets, shine
Across the inky fabric of my past
In dimming rays, and I have yet to find
My kin, beyond one generation vast.
       Our minds behold what never we can touch;
       Our time, our space, three pebbles in our clutch.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Image: flickr - kern.justin

The Plow of Time

The Plow of Time
by Gideon Burton

The plow of time, a cosmic blade that scores
the paths of Jupiters and wobbling moons,
that trenches passive galaxies, that bores
its twilight augurs into day's cocoon.
The scalpel time, irreverent and crude,
repulsing pulses, bleeding rhythms pale
and panting, corpses stiffening and mute,
the oxygen of oxygen grown stale.
The sickle seconds subdividing breath,
pretending order, overturning light
or black or shivering silence blue with death,
with thatched and snapping neurons, darkly bright.
    You bend or measure, clocking endless noon,
    too late, too thin to rhyme with now or soon.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - Lynn