Poet’s Corner – Looking Up

Looking Up

I see the motions of many astonishing minds

The markings of women astronomers

Shaping the cosmos

Exploring nebulae, comets and the movement

Of time and space.

Holding hands in a circle of light

The magic of science and

The constant measure of the universe

Being told in a kaleidoscope of ideas.

What stars are made of, black holes and exoplanets

New tools of thought

Binding them fast like a string of pearls.

Long ago, Hypatia, a mathematician,

Astronomer and philosopher was there.

And way forward in time gave Caroline Herschel

A telescope.

Sweeping for comets made her name,

Reaching up with starlit fingers.

Henrietta Leavitt altered our view

Of vast distances and brightness of stars,

And Sara Seager sought exoplanets

As Andrea Ghez searched our own galaxy’s center.

And in our time an artist‘s name

Highlights a crater on Mercury.

Brilliance abounds as women 

Tell their stories in dazzling languages

As we all look up.

The poem is titled “Looking Up” and the artwork “Gravitational Waltz” by Marsha Solomon