The Comet's Tale
We have always agonized over their mysterious message
A rare celestial event has fired my imagination and this poem is the result. Weaving astronomy, astrology, history and the Bible into a strangely quilted fabric, I hope that it speaks to you and fires your imagination as well. We’re living through historic times, pregnant with meaning…
These fragments I have shored against certain ruin/while Others have called Time
It is 80,000 years later than we think/Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas has returned and
The message is garbled/but we may be back on the brink
I console myself/we were allowed 80,000 years more/since we first ventured out of Africa/naked and aggressive/ our feet following that comet’s flashing trail/a questionable creature/on a windy shore/always reaching for more
We witnessed Atlas four times/Roughly 300,000 years/not bad for a creature so immature/creative and weird/always almost outwitting Nature
I have something to tell you/Amid my confusion/I know I am the last of my kind/ alone and out of my mind/on the last Space Station/A great shining orb we thought/Would save us from ourselves/We like mind games like these/I am a past master of chess moves and life extended/I made a beautiful mess of it/I wanted just a little more time but
The Others have decided Time’s Up/We’re in the final stretch/Go please and fetch me something/To hold onto while I’m dying/The Gods are absent because we were lying/To ourselves the entire time
Surely Atlas is a celestial messenger/it must mean something to us/secular sleepless post-modern Sapiens/Who almost forgot about the/Three Wise Men/The Magi, perhaps Astrologers/From the East/Who could read great portents/In the conjunctions of stars/Of war and peace
They followed a comet to Bethlehem/And arrived at a manger with a baby/Called the King of the Jews/Herod was informed and even/the shepherds in the fields/quaked at an angel that announced/the astounding news
But this Birth was hard and bitter agony for them/like a Death foretold/sent/like a bottle/hurled forward in time/Something was being born and something/was yet to die, and dying is hard/When the Gods are sulking somewhere out of reach and
The beach is empty of people but full of debris/ and screeching gulls/and the wise Men from the East/No longer come to teach us lessons/Yet I beseech you
Have mercy on us/the Comet’s mysterious tale/is riding a gigantic ellipse/for another 80,000 years/and when it returns/I know there will not be a human witness because we’re long gone from the cosmic scene
As if we never were/as if we had never been but a fitful dream
Dreamt by Gods unseen/who sent Comets to circle and roam the heavens
blazing with beauty divine and presence serene
