Sonnet XXXIX

Galactic bubble with an embryonic star least 8 times the mass of the Sun nestled in its shell. This star could one day be one of the brightest in the galaxy.

Calculating the probabilities
that our world is constructed uniquely ―
intoxicating possibilities
that others will cross our way obliquely.
Let’s ponder how life might exist elsewhere,
it’s sensible! Where are the right pools
for life to begin, so temperate and fair?
Astrobiologists do not have those rules
to explain the riddles of creation,
or the imprint of initial cosmos.
Astronauts query, in the space station:
they study the origins of homos.
The knowledge they uncover is sublime,
to feed dreams we will share for all of time.

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Photo credit:  European Space Agency

Sonnet XXVIII

North of the Himalayas Taken April 21 2011 from ISS

A giant wedge, forced up on a summit.
The melted rock on crumbled mountain tops.
The nuggets of silvery snow sunlit
on the landscape. The inverted planet drops
off in a land of ribcage hill torrents.
Expiring geophysical breaths
dissipate in thin air. An act warrants
a vaporized battle to ensue. Deaths
of sediments squeeze onto plates. Trivia
tells that magnetic deposits today,
are charged by Earth’s fields. Here, where India
and Asia crashed, crust was carried away.
Since much is veiled, this view only reports
mountains with crowns of luminescent quartz.

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This shot was posted by @Astro_Ron on Earthday of 2011.  Ron Garan is a New Yorker, like me. He flew F-16’s as a test pilot, in USAF, around the time I was a test engineer for at the 416th at Edwards, yet I never met him. : (

You can read more about him http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/garan-rj.html

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The Poetry Pantry Is Now Open! – #79

His organization is Fragile Oasis  and he’s also on facebook.