WEBVTT

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The center of this
collection is a series

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of meditations on
Hubble Telescope images

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where I approach them from
an ekphrastic point of view,

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that's when a poet uses a
detailed description, according

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to the Norton
Anthology of Poetry,

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to examine a visual work.

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There they mean artwork
for the most part,

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but the work that Hubble has
done for us over the last 20

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plus years, has given us
a glimpse of the heavens

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that no one had ever imagined.

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This next poem is based
on the Horsehead Nebula.

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Number two, The
Horsehead Nebula.

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"A horse is a thing of
such beauty none will

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tire of looking at him so
long as he displays himself

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in all his splendor.

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The Greek historian,
Xenophon, imprinted

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like a glyph in our minds
a pattern born in trance.

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The dream of momentum rendered
against the sensory void

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of darkness.

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Pulled into the Earth and cold
caves of Lascaux and Chauvet

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where shamans
ordered their animal

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visions against stone walls.

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Imagine that erratum of
prehistory, a carved ivory

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tusk worn smooth with
worry, the Voglehead horse

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held close as the tribal spears
stalk a herd of dun ponies

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to spook stampede toward
the hungry luck of gravity

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and cliff.

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Imagine the first
dim soul sensing

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the absence of a horse's
back, begging for his form.

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The scamper astride
an unwitting beast.

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The terror and shock.

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A ruined stalk.

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Frenzy breaks full gallop
across the steppes.

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That moment, horse and rider,
tangle of hair and hide,

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thigh and quarter clench
seismic-blurred landscape,

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thunder and dust, eccrine
perfume, lather, and panic--

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in that exchange two species
intertwine irrecoverably,

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a new knot in the
strings of theory.

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And rider's thrown a day's walk
away into a new lack he cannot

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fill.

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In the old story, the King's
son turns the white-starred head

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of an unbroken beast toward the
sun, soothes him with whispers,

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elides his shadow.

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This familiar silhouette,
this dearest coincidence,

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so distilled through mirrors
and software that these strange

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physics cannot help
their own resemblance.

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Astral red fire, the
backdrop of cosmos,

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each star a neuron
firing 'horse.'

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Queen's gambit, black
steed, Bucephalus

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bound toward eternity."

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