Moon
Moon remembers.
Marooned in shadowed night,
White powder plastered
On her pockmarked face,
Scarred with craters,
Filled with waterless seas,
She thinks back
To the Eagle,
To the flight
Of men from Earth,
Of rocks sent back in space,
And one
Faint
Footprint
In the Sea of Tranquility.
~Myra Cohn Livingston
Jewels
Space blazed with jewels,
A shimmering ice
Of billions of diamonds
Dazzle
The Milky Way:
Jupiter, a giant agate,
Uranus, a ball of jade,
Pluto, a luminescent pearl,
Saturn, a halo of rings.
A slice
Of moon, a crescent brooch.
Bright rubies splay
Antares
In this
Midnight
Masquerade.
~Myra Cohn Livingston
Asteroids
Space is a
Playing field for asteroids,
Dusty and sun-scorched,
Orbiting
About the sun,
Each has a name,
Eros,
Icarus,
Vesta,
Flora…
Through a great void
These chunks
Of rock
And metal
Run,
Hurtling,
Colliding
In their endless game.
~Myra Cohn Livingston
Comets
Long distance travelers
From the cold
Of space,
Ice-clad,
Dirty,
Tugged by a passing star,
Journey to see the sun
Whose searing burn
Swells them with gas
As on they race
Streaming their blowing, sunlit hair.
There are comets.
They come.
They go.
They will return.
~Myra Cohn Livingston
Sun
Space
Is afire
With bursts of bubbling gas,
Colliding atoms,
Boiling wells
And solar flares
Spewing
From a burning star, the sun.
Ninety-three million miles away
This mass,
Quaking inferno,
Pluming arcs and bridges
Roars;
A giant bomb
Exploding
Hydrogen.
~Myra Cohn Livingston
Secrets
Space keeps its secrets
Hidden
It does no tell.
Are black holes time machines?
Where do last comets go?
Is Pluto moon or planet?
How many, how vast
Unknown galaxies beyond us?
Do other creatures dwell
On distant spheres?
Will we ever know?
Space is silent.
It seldom answers.
But we ask.
~Myra Cohn Livingston
Satellites
Monitors of steel,
These space detectives seek
Clues to the beginning of our galaxy.
Informers of the energy of stars, of gamma rays;
Weighted with sensors,
They listen, watch, and speak
Of radiation, solar flares,
Atmospheric density.
Stalking magnetic fields,
They serve out their days.
~Myra Cohn Livingston
