Eleven and Two, plus Eight
Janet Kuypers
edited 07/15/11
derived from the 2007 poem “Seven and Seven, plus Eighteen”
maybe I’m an observer
like an astronomer
looking out into the universe
trying to understand what makes everything
everything
maybe I’m meant to be an astronomer
studying things colder than ice, far away
you know, Pluto is an aberrant ball of ice
I don’t know, I was taught it was a planet
but then they told me no,
it’s not
it’s just a ball of ice from the Kuiper Belt
but molecule by molecule,
we originate from stars
and now I know we are all linked,
our bodies formed from stardust
but outer space
is a violent place
violent explosions create the stars
and our earth has earthquakes,
avalanches, volcanoes
tsunamis, typhoons
and in all of this madness
somehow I found you
I’ve survived the thunder
and the lightning
the blizzards,
the hurricanes
and the tornadoes
I’ve lived through the drought
I’ve survived it all
I’ve even been dealt a near fatal blow
from humanity
and with you I have walked on the tops of glaciers
crouching down from the violent winds
looking down into the beginning of time
with you I have watched solar storms
and the geomagnetic aberrations of the Aurora Borealis
from near the Arctic Circle
and we’ve looked at Venus through our telescope
and I’ve watched you photograph Orion in the night sky
so with these observations,
I thee wed
because after all of my searching throughout the univserse
I’ve found what I’ve been looking for
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