(In)significance

I recently acquired an image of the Pale Blue Dot. In 1990 NASA commanded the spacecraft Voyager 1 to turn its camera around before exiting our planetary system for one last picture of home. The photo set me to thinking.

(In)significance

The night sky a reminder

of unknown worlds light-years

                                   distant.

The star-scape a redemption

from the overbearing sun.

Our own burning luminary,

mastermind behind the Aurora.

Despite its confidence in being

    the center of the universe

it remains a trivial flame,

ablaze in a forgotten outpost.

An "en passant" solar system

in the Milky Way

itself a bantam galaxy nestled

                 between billions of others

with Sol only a provincial official

                                on the periphery.

But I puzzle how can this be 

since the cosmos clearly revolves 

                                          around me.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

The Inscrutability of Wild Things

As promised, it's September and I'm back with my scribblings, but with a change. I will not be clogging your inbox weekly with my poems. Instead, twice a month I'll be sending out new material. 

Today's lines stem from one of my walks up in cabin country. However, I normally see deer and not their predators.

The Inscrutability of Wild Things

Up ahead an animal like a stuffed

toy from my childhood bed

sprawls on a country road.

My eyes sigh, "Dog on the loose."

The rhythm of my walk pulls me

onward toward the shapeshifter

at the border of the blacktop.

An urge for flight flashes my neurons

                                            too late.

A strapping wolf wobbles to a stand

like an old man, drifts off and vanishes

into the grasses.

The earth heaves,

and I, stock-still beneath the swirling sun,

                                           start to breathe.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor