Advent Found Poem (found just now)

     UNEXPECTED LIGHT

       courtesy of Dennis Overbye & NY Times (12.8.20)

Slight threads of Agnes Martin

touch their way across a night sea.

The universe is a shade too bright.

…more very faint galaxies or star clusters

     contributing to the background light.

The most likely explanation, he said…

    a less exciting possibility… “we messed up

    and missed a light source or camera

    artifact that we should have figured out.

    This is what I worry about the most.”

But how dark is dark? …the measurement

    had a 5 percent chance of being a fluke.

       “Your distant neighbor eating leftover turkey

    at three in the morning is not going to

    wake you up at night from the glare.”

A leafless oak with its arms thrown out

like a knot of knots in the arctic wind

– thin memory of warmth (hearth,

heartbeat).  Presumably, in an infinite

    static universe, every line of sight

        ends at a star, so shouldn’t the sky appear

    as bright as the sun?  But astronomers

    now know… But how dark is dark?

        2 sigma – far cry from gold standard

    for discovery of 5 sigma… zoomed past

Arrokoth, formerly Ultima Thule

(7.14.2015).  We imagine a manger

in drear December.  One ox-eyed

bare exile, burbling in a steaming barn

beneath caved-in roof… placid beasts, 

primitive smiles.  In the Darkness

    of Empty Space, Unexpected Light.

From the human heart steps the King

    of Fools… now her serene lowliness

nurses the Emperor of Poverty in peace.

         12.10.20