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.