Long Exposure
Love what you’ve never seen: encircling sphere
of icy shards beyond the heliopause,
too small, too faint, too far to be much more
than theoretical. The sky’s every speck
sends light, every hair’s breadth swarming
if we fix on it with huge mirrors, funnel
those wisps through lenses and instruments
fine enough to slow even time. Focus
for twenty minutes on what’s barely there
and the image takes shape, four hundred million
light years turning brilliant galaxies vague
as they gather on our screen. Love what
we’ll never know as much as you love
entrails of galaxies spilling behind,
luscious, slow destruction that for us, here,
exists now and now and now. Models
do their best to explain what may be
compared to what we’ve seen. The eye
fails so easily: a comet’s single tail
always two, geometry hiding
one from view. We gather all the light
we can that pours from every distance,
faithful to what we scarcely see. Wait
for the moment one body passes between
a star and us, atmosphere ghosting the star
around the planet’s edge. Love that weirdness,
love our limitations, all we don’t know
but reach toward. The universe expands
wherever we look, every point its own
center, the beginning everywhere at once.