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
