Notre Dame of Impermanence

People who have no poetry in their lives have to live in other ways, and have real life events take them out of the ordinary.

Space is where we often go to get images that might save us. Thinking of space this way I think space is worth reaching, much more valuable than sputniks and rocket ships and planetary probes to determine whether or not there's water on Mars.

The image of space I hold: it's that either us, or something like us, is not out there, that if something like us is out there that something is better, finer, even stranger and more beautiful than we are, or that nothing's out there but one colorful planet of nothingness after another.

This image of space is the best I can do with the unknown, other than wondering what my death will be like once it's here.. Some people might think this a morbid way of wondering but I find it exciting, invigorating, a form of time travel in which reaching the infinite is always a possibility. 

As a poet put it, Things can burn in water and drown in flame. From one standpoint to another everyone alive knows that only nothing lasts. 

I haven't read The Bible in many years but I looked at "The Sermon on the Mount" this morning, receptive to the hristian message: It's not just "blessed are the poor," it's blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

A Planetary Assemblage, assembled sometime in 2017 and reassembled recently. Photograph by author, all rights reserved.