poem: A Galaxy Was Seen Dying Today

The world's most beautiful butterflies die every day

       by the millions, unnoticed.

 

 

 

In today's news- astronomists capture images

    of an entire galaxy undergoing Little Death.

 

throwing off fireballs like missiles as it loses its energy

  unable to create anew, they say- stars, planets

      asteroid belts. It just kind of gives up. Living.

 

it dies... and takes out everything in its path

  with it: a suicide mission of old age crisis.

 

 

 

there are billions of us, billions of them, but most of us

simply don't always think to look around and notice them

 

 

 

Law of averages says there is life, maybe, in its path-

    would they have known to look for its coming?

           Say last prayers? Get the hell out of there?

 

was Van Gogh's Starry Night perhaps painted on other canvases

  by other hands, protected as a pinnacle of achievement

         by someone else's sensibilities? How long did they

 

manage to protect it, from themselves, from negligence,

    before dying too alongside their greatest works,

               unfinished?

 

was it something they thought to take with them

        where and when they went? Could they?

 

 

 

Their fleeting perfection goes unmourned, unnoticed,

     a flower set to wind dance stilted swirling

                 in the skies of our limited days.

 

 

 

why bother, then, any single act of great beauty,

     created in a dispassionate universe where fireballs

             of mindless passage can obliterate them?

 

Which loss would be keener- mourning the treasured things,

 robbed, or not comprehending the gifts while they sat in

       our hands, fleetingly? can an act of beauty grace

 

   a soul forever, if it comes back as someone else's stardust,

               os does it become annihilated, forever?

       Do we celebrate knowledge, or its opposing force?

 

 

 

Today, I stopped to rescue a single dying fritillary, placed her

    out of harm's way, where she could drink in safety;

       she was gone when I returned. Maybe she only existed

    for me to write this poem

           for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

yes I read science news feeds every day. and contemplate horrible things. I try to water them down for human consumption. I don't always hit my mark.

Reviews

[emmajoy]

Everything starts to die from the moment it's given life. Surely? Who's found the answer to immortality, whether or not about a walking-talking being or growth or whatever? Scientists have a lot to answer for, they know truths or have suspicions about Existence that the 'average bear' couldnt deal with. So, day to day fading into a shadow - albeit over eons, goes unnoticed. ' there are billions of us, billions of them, but most of us ~ simply don't always think to look around and notice them.. '

If we could only prove that Man is probably the most ignorant and indifferent of creatures. He/we have plundered and ruined our planet over the centuries. We've taken, we've destroyed, we've ignored what is now a place loaded with billions of people mostly of whom couldn't care a jot that our world is dying because of us, because of its fading life span within the solar system. Could be too late. '.. if it comes back as someone else's stardust, ~ or does it become annihilated, forever?

But now it's fashionable to care, to treat soil and the creatures within it with generosity, as opposed to kindness; it's now time to protect dying species, tho they've been dying for years; it's time to clear our seas and mountain ranges where death just lies rotting. And what about the air about and inside us .. et al.

Life in its biblical or scientific form is magnificent. It's creation, it's more than the skill and passion of writing a poem, painting a portrait, singing the most beautiful area .. it's all those things and more in varying forms on far more planets than we know of. Life, a planet, its inhabitants, its glory, is near inexplicable. It's a precious and priceless gift we more often or not turn away from because our mundane lives are more essential - we think. We have eclipses and other phenomena, again people wonder at them, eulogise a few days then, carry on regardless

Dear Marie, beautiful though it is to save a butterfly, one has to be courageous enough to listen for its final sight as it lies weightless on your palm. You of all people have that courage, your writing proves it, your life proves it, and your generous heart and inspired words make people think.

Apologies galore but absolutely sincere, I've written far too much, probably mostly twaddle but my thoughts.

[Marie Anzalone]

Emma, NOTHING that you write would ever be considered "twaddle" in my eyes. Ramble away- that is what these spaces are for. I appreciate every single word.

"everything starts to die..."... or I would pose perhaps if it achieves its purpose, it becomes an immortal part of something larger than the sum of all random parts? If something in the spin of a proton is affected, and its twin antiproton millions of miles away is also simultaneously affected- isn't it just possible that a life of purpose affects events in other galaxies? and vice-versa? I like to think our gifts and offerings do matter.. that immortality really is soemthign that can be achieved when energies align. Maybe noticing butterflies is part of that?

[Jack...]

I just loved the formatting of this piece. I love the message and how you bring it across being led by small but beautiful and truth-filled headlines. To my mind, what you have written is the undeniable truth for we do not notice that which is not ourselves most of the time. If I may ask, what is a Fritillary? I am not familiar with that term.

I truly want to say more but I find I am without the proper words at this moment. Your peom moved me.

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank you, Jack- I am waiting for a few folks for a trainign, so will respond in more depth later. I will tell you that a fritillary is a type of butterfly, orange with black and white checks on the wings.

[Jack...]

Thank you, that sounds so very beautiful.

[Marie Anzalone]

http://carolyncholland.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/the-regal-fritillary-butterfly-on-bergamot/

[Jen]

.

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

I am floored by your eloquence.

[ríða andlit]

Oh! You've stumbled upon ANOTHER equal review. Astounding, isn't it? His grasp of the English language is next to none.

[Princeps Angelus Mors]

Such brilliance displayed has me in a dirge to drown puppies in chocolate milk.

[Donald Meikle]

time is hard to beat, some poets succeed, as do other artists. visions and perspectives keep us looking.
Isn't it nice to know companionship.

[Marie Anzalone]

we are social creatures- companionship is more than nice; I would say, necessary. ablanced with enough solitude that time can be contmeplated in all of its manifestations.

[Marie Anzalone]

*balanced

[Cool Handless Luke]

A very deep and thought provoking poem you have crafted here Marie. It reminds me of the negligence and ignorance of the human race as a whole. We could learn a lot and benefit greatly if we simply cared more and paid more attention. The last verse in italics sealed this one for me. A very thoughtful piece from start to end.

[Marie Anzalone]

How much do we miss, Luke, by not paying attention? I have a [now former] close friend who spends much of his life claiming he is lonely, feeling unloved. yet when his wife and unborn child needed medical for their lives to be saved, dozens of people rallied to send him money and prayers, and they pulled through. He somehow never connected that with love, continuing to say how the world is a cold, indifferent place outside of "Family." Simply could not accpet love that did not come from the "right" source. Two children he loves, a wife he does not. How many of us live like that? In Wally Lamb's "She's Come Undone," there is a gay character dying of AIDS. He talks on his deathbed about a former male coworker, who gay-bashed him every single day. A janitor at the school where he worked. When the guy got sick, though, and his family started shuning him, the janitor started showing up at his door with milkshakes and time for conversation. "you can't judge," he explained. "You have to take the love that is offered in this life. You have to drink people's milkshakes."

I like mine with chocolate. Let's make a pact to share one, one day. From a distance or [preferably] in-person. There is a little place down the street that makes chocolate banana smoothies with handroasted chocolate. We can toast the next time I am there.

[Ken Simm.]

And they say time travel doesn't exist. What were we doing when that galaxy died? That butterfly was an atom of stardust flung away from a star in that galaxy. Who is to say that it wasn't? Does it matter?
A fellow student in my undergrad days would walk up to a painting just done. Smoke his pipe, a simple affectation, and study the painting apparently carefully. After long consideration he would stand back and say, " Wah, but is it, art?" pointing meaningfully with his pipe.
To which the rest of the studio or whoever was in the studio would always reply, " I'm an artist and if I say its art, then it is art!"
Ergo, I'm a life so if I say its life then it is life. I am immortal so if I say it is immortal, as thoughts are immortal, then it is immortal. I am an artist so if I say this poem s high art then it is high art formed as was the butterfly from the dust of a life then ended a cycle, how long and a butterfly life span ago.

[Marie Anzalone]

I absolutely love this review, Ken. The scientist and art critic in me is shuddering and laughing at the same time, but the Romantic in me is crying, "Take that, you swineherd of cynical treacle!"I thought about that same thing the other day; how something becomes art because someone simply thinks to call it so. A scientific news article and random happenstance combine to make art? Why on earth not. And because someone thought to do it, it will never again not be art.

I sure hope there is something to this idea of immortality through art, my thoughtful friend. :- )

[Tree]

I think you hit the mark. If we paid more attention when things died we might better understand our own plight, and surely that butterfly and the news about the last gasps of a spiral galaxy brought this poem into our homes. Into our consciousness. Thought provoking, to say the least..

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank oyu, Diego, I love the way interactions with other writers opens my mind more, makes me see the world a little differently. I do wonder alot about Jung's collective unconsciousness theory, and how much merit it has. I also wonder why it is so hard to view each day as a gift, for us as a culture? Why the love affair with cynicism? I tried that once for about a day, as I heard it makes one look taller (I am just over 5' tall). Those shoes pinched and hurt my feet too much. I went barefoot instead and dealt with the splinters and throns and mud and was much happer for it.

[Marie Anzalone]

*you

[Tree]

I read somewhere it is hard for humans to live in the here and now because from an evolutionary)stand point we are tuned to be more often than naught –– in survival mode. For 40 plus thusand years homo sapiens didn't know –––what the hell, was around the next corner. No time to relax. Stunts that spirtual growth, too. In another 40 maybe we can wean ourselves out of crisis mode:)

[Marie Anzalone]

It would be something to see, wouldn't it? In Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver talks about how we take these majestic animals, the wolves and domesticate them and bring them into our homes. And even though there is no need to trample the tall grass, they will still turn a circle three times before lying down, because that is what they are programmed ot do.

[emmajoy]

Tis said that they turn three times because way back they were searching and clearing their sleeping place of snakes/serpents and all. The series of actions became part of their instintive psyche or whatever ..

[h d e rushin]

it's hard to write poetry, but it is possible if we can conquer all undue haste or shallowness; if flight
is what echelons are, formations in which each winged thing flies at a certain elevation above or
below and at a certain distance behind and to the right or left of the winged thing ahead. I come
from a family of Baptists so the optimum word for this brand of escapism is caution. "Can an act
of beauty grace a soul forever, if it comes back as someone elses stardust"? The simple answer
is yes if we try hard enough. The poetic answer is Marie and the other erne, long winged
sea eagles who say they comtemplate horrible shores but tend to land where and when ever they
want to.

In keeping to my unabashed belief that you are unconsciously good,
this is a fabulous write caressing the ESB (electrical stimulation of the brain) of an old soul.

ps: I do believe in other peoples in other galaxies and other Van Gogh's more uncrumpled
than ours.

dana. (my computer is down. four days running, no poetry written..yikes.

[Marie Anzalone]

4 days without poetry, dana? Is every writeable surface in your house covered with scribbles and doodles yet? I had a place once that had, essentially, a dry-erase board style glossy white wall surface on one entire living room wall. The first place I had to my own. I hated it until it occurred to me to purchase a few dry-erase markers. Up sprang a forest of white birch in autumn, in black and white and gold, surrounded by early aborted poetry attempts. It occurs to me that you could benefit from this.

You grew up Baptist but escaped unscathed? You are a rare soul, indeed, LOL. My grandmother's family were Methodists, my father's, Lutheran. I raised myself, shaman. Caution does not even begin to tell the whole story, but yes, as good a starting point as any.

Has any creature in existence been a better symbol of spiritual wanderign and loneliness than the long-winged sea eagle? but old souls recognize each other across space-time, too. For soem reason, I often tried to make it work with very young ones. Maybe I life their freshness too much, their rawness, their edginess.

I too have pondered the other Van Gogh question, ever since reading Arthur C Clarke's haunting short story, "The Star," one of the few extremely short stories (2 pages) with merit. Maybe I was trying to recapture a bit of his magic, here?

always such a delight to have your mind-expanding words on my page, my friend.

[h d e rushin]

I have begun to write my notes on the back of mortgage notices and water bills....how about
that for desperation, but no white drywall scribbling cave etchings yet....lol, dana

[Marie Anzalone]

I have written them on napkins and restaurant receipts and once on tree bark. I have been late to meetings because of the need to pull over the car. Other times, I remember an interview I heard with Tom Waits, where he said, "so when the muse strikes while I'm doing 80 on the LA EXpressway, I tell, it sometimes, 'Can't you see I'm busy now and have no way to respond to you? Either come back another time or go bother Leaonard Cohen.'"

no worries, my friend, they can be patient. Sometimes. :-)

[Tree]

Had a good laugh at this exchange. When I first got the urge to write add-hock, I didn't know what the the hell was going on, only that I got physically ill if I did not jot something down and kind of a high when I did. One time I wrote what I thought was the end all poem on a napkin in a restaurant, later, that evening, I reached inside my pocket only to find that I had lost it. Determined not to shortchange the muse that inspired it I back tracked to a 7 eleven mini mart, and there it was. on the curb, right in front of my truck. But just as I stepped out of my vehicle, Undar (yes that was his real name) a foreign exchange student out of SrI Lanka, and moonlighting at his uncles business, began his nightly high pressure wash of the sidewalk... My "Howl," was lost forever. Disintegrated like wet toilet paper. Depressed, I went inside the mini mart and bought a bottle of wine and drank it in my truck. And that's when I saw her, –––– the muse, laughing uncontrollably in my passenger seat. Now I'm talking metaphorically of course, but if you asked me to describe what this metaphorical muse might of looked like I'd say this: She had long brown hair and brown eyes. Slender ––– but not thin. She was dressed casual business, kept her finger nails clean and short, and though I couldn't gage her height she might of been as tall as me ––– six feet. I detected no use of cosmetics of any kind, and though she was not what you might deem pretty, she was handsome... And maybe she saw the disappointment in my eyes, or maybe she felt bad about laughing at this nuevo poet's misfortune, or maybe she just wanted to have some more fun... So she rested her left hand onto mine, transformed her laughing face into a believable empathetic one, leaned over then whispered in my ear: 'silly boy, write a poem entitled The Greatest Love Poem I Ever Wrote But You'll Never Read It Because i lost it, Then got too damn drunk to recreate it.' And that's exactly what I did, the poem of course sucked, but that wasn't the point; the point was that I was rescued by my inner muse, then learned a valuable lesson: which was moleskin pocket notebooks; fit snug in the back pocket and now, I never leave home without one..

[Marie Anzalone]

Diego, that story was absolutely priceless. Good lord I can picture her, too. I have always believed that when the time was right for something, the universe would start chucking brick bats at your head if you ignored taps on the shoulder. If you manged to dodge those, she comes after you with a 2x4 and beats you soundly about the head and shoulders.

I sure hope you are writing this down somewhere other than my poem's page!

[Marie Anzalone]

"The compelling thing about making art—or making anything, I suppose—is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe, Nimbue, Artemis, Athena, all the old sorceresses: they must have known the feeling as they transformed mere men into fabulous creatures, stole the secrets of the magicians, disposed armies: ah, look, there it is, the new thing. Call it a swine, a war, a laurel tree. Call it art."
— Audrey Niffenegger

[Tree]

Great quote, M. Right on target..

[Marie Anzalone]

I do try. I even get it right every now and again. :-)

[Georgia Gypsy]

I rescued a dragon fly from a cat.....oh that i could write something to commemorate it, like you did here......so much to ponder!
gg

[Marie Anzalone]

Why not write about the wise sillifulness of rescuing a dragonfly from a cat? Not everyone takes the time to do such things, you know. I admire that in you.

[Georgia Gypsy]

i love that word....sillifulness!! maybe i will write such a piece!!

[Marie Anzalone]

I think you should :-)

[Blaise]

It's the greatest miracle that we even exist on this planet.
Might we be ever grateful

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank you, Blaise, and I would add, might we learn what that looks like.