Constellation

The stars are moving at fantastic speeds.
Their motion is invisible, my span of life inadequate
To clock or plot the change.
The ancient ones left charts behind to show the nighttime cosmic coals
From which they named the shapes that they perceived.
A litany, a rosary, a legacy they left behind,
A chant we still intone:
Pictor, Pixus, Sagitta
Canis , Lyra, Aquila
Cygnus, Pisces, Draco, Crux
And many more by which to navigate
Our travels, myths and future fate.

The galaxies accelerate, centrifugal they fling themselves
And we expansion call it. The constellations
Rearrange in cosmic time we will not live to see,
Still spurred by the Big Bang, influenced by gravity
And spirits recognized by physicists alone.
The great bespangled blackest dome that takes our longing gaze
Into itself tonight
Is not the same as met Phoenician eyes,
Yet only just a little changed. By it we still sail.

Within my life (its hours, days and years) my family and my friends
A group of stars that move at speeds I can perceive,
Or think and dream I can. I ache to name the patterns
As my kin and kith do constellate, a universe in which
Our lives like galaxies and nebulas expand,
Orbiting around my heart, incubating stars, an ever changing map,
Dancing with the gravity of other bodies,
Spiralling with some shared force.

I ponder like a physicist. In this small sphere of space and time
That we call life
The moment in which each new life began
Did launch a cosmic force with beauty like a phosporescent sea of
Diamond dust throughout the night’s dark dome.
These wondrous constellations are the map
By which our travels, myths and future fate
Make sense.