A Gathering of Poetry | July 2023
One of the things I love best about poetry is how it can take me out of myself… and this week’s poem does just that!
Recently, Ada Limón shared this on Instagram and I knew nothing about NASA’s Europa Clipper but I did know that getting a signed copy of the poem was an impulse purchase that I would not regret. A few clicks later and the impulse was successful and it arrived last week! It is now framed and on my desk… it is the perfect reminder when I am too stuck in myself to look beyond.
I imagine that someday someone in that outer space will read this poem as well and think the same things… to look beyond themselves… and perhaps be in awe of a society that valued poetry… the best unifier I know!
In Praise of Mystery
A POEM FOR EUROPA
by Ada Limón
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
and it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.
“In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” was released at the Library of Congress by the 24th U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón on June 1, 2023 in celebration of the poem’s engraving on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, scheduled to launch in October of 2024.
I would love it if you all had a poem to share! It is easy… just share one! And be sure you stop and see what Bonny has gathered with the link on her blog!
See you all next week!
