Andromeda’s
nine billion years old
the Milky Way’s
thirteen
and the black ant
I crunched
under my bare toe
this morning
could have been a year or twenty
that ant
was just toiling
from sandy nest
to kitchen cupboard
but on this fateful
July day
happened to encounter
this cabin’s
sometime inhabitant
me
human and aging
and by the luck
of being born
in the land of the free
and a biped
with a frontal lobe
I’m still
counting on another
few thousand
nights
standing
in the dirt driveway
lifting
my head
heavenward, seeing
the Milky Way’s
faint glitter
reminded
of the age map
I found
years ago
flipping through
Encyclopedia Britannica
70,000 stars
color-coded
by years-since-birth
neon rainbow
fanning rightward
over glossy
and fingerprinted page.
Where
can our mortal fear
land—
poised as we are
between ant
consciousness
and spinning
galaxy?
Starry Messenger
Star-fueled
spacecraft
propelled
by steady diet
of photons,
fastest object
ever made
by humans,
Juno
spent two years
looping
through the Solar System
beyond dusty Mars
and our bright
blue planet
obscured
by clouds
formed from
kicked-off emissions
then
slingshotted
past us
with nary
a wave,
somersaulting
over
two billion miles
of Milky Way
before
pirouetting
above Jupiter’s
clouds,
ducking
under
bands of radiation
and entering
the giant planet’s
swirling
auroras, its haloes
of storming
magnetic
fire.
Today Juno
transmits images
of Jupiter’s moons—
Io with its
molten interior,
icy Europa,
Ganymede, magnetic
field, underground
ocean,
Callisto, ancient
and cratered—
Galileo’s
starry messengers
composed
like a symphony
of swirling
gases,
gases
from which
we came.
Erica Sofer Bodwell is an Israeli-American poet who lives in Concord, New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in White Stag, Entropy/Enclave, APIARY, The Fem, Coal Hill Review, PANK, HeART, Barnstorm, Hot Metal Bridge, The Tishman Review and other journals. Her chapbook, Up Liberty Street, was a finalist for the 2015 Coal Hill Review Chapbook Contest, the 2015 Blast Furnace Chapbook Contest and the 2015 Minerva Rising Chapbook Contest. She participated in the July 2016 Tupelo Press 30/30 Project.