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The New Star

1054 A.D.

July 26, 1054 – The SN 1054 supernova is recorded by the Chinese, Arab and possibly Native Americans, near the star Zeta Tauri. For 23 days it remains bright enough to be seen in daylight. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula (NGC 1952).

I.

Titanium skaters on lakes of metallic hydrogen
Etch constant curves of crystalline
Isotopes of orange uranium
All about the vacant house.

Enigmas of equations
Slide lattices to rest
In beds of powdered strontium,
Molding energy as form suggests.

In the place of flux we find new forms,
For flux-formed spaces enfold
Charms of magnet’s fever
That conduct the core from pole to pole.

II.

The whiteness of Earth’s silences
Are eyes that stare on space.
Orbits chart them ceaselessly,
Tracing irises of lace.

The inner of Earth’s outer
Is a torus twisted twice.
Balloons ascend within it
Painting shadows in the room.

III.

What can the mind of silence hear
Other than a whiteness past revision, past review?

It evolves from epicenters,
Stretches measureless as sound,

Or is seen as the floor of the void
Where the whine of protons stills….

In the drifts of chromium snow,
and gazes on the bones of matter bare.

At times, men in aluminum cloaks
Descend the neutron ladder,

And move in a sleet of particles
Too scintillating for instruments to record.

At times, men in groups descend
Through the smoke of the universe,

To tend the embers, imprison flame.
Their cascading movements sparkle.

We taste the afterimage of events.
Below us, pale and infinitely silent,

The plutonium leaves arabesque
Through radiant silences of solid helium.

IV.

Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.

Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.

Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.

Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.

Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.

As if I had just woken from all water into dream.

Tassajara Zen Mountain Center,California 1973 — Paradise,
California, 2017

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • ghostsniper July 27, 2017, 7:16 AM

    I liked that, though I think the first word in line 16 should have been “Tracing”, as etch is used in line two. jessayin….

  • Frank P July 27, 2017, 7:29 AM

    Was this, then, just a coincidence, or a message?

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_s9Rcsg5UI

  • I Am What I Am February 28, 2021, 7:57 AM

    Frank P:
    When I saw the date, that was also my first thought.

    IC XC
    NI KA

  • ghostsniper February 28, 2021, 8:04 AM

    There, much better. Where shall I send the invoice? j/k

  • Vanderleun February 28, 2021, 8:28 AM

    To my lawyers, Bells and Palsey, who are waiting to hit you with a response written in such intense legal terms that reading it will give you a permanent facial twitch.

  • Anne February 28, 2021, 10:30 AM

    Could someone here find information as to what the emotional impact was on the culture in Constantinople during those days of the cosmic event? Was the city already in a heat wave and did this unusual solar event add to the emotional state of the participants in the “big schism”? Did the guy representing the pope get even more moronic than he already was, or did the Emperor see the solar event as a sign? Would be interesting to have some knowledge of the relationship between the two events from reliable documented resources.

  • anonymous February 28, 2021, 10:34 AM

    To GVL:

    “To my lawyers, Bells and Palsey, who are waiting to hit you with a response written in such intense legal terms that reading it will give you a permanent facial twitch.”
    REALLY? You know lawyers like this–wow that is so unusual. The only kind I ever found are the ones who refuse to take a case because “I am afraid–THEY will destroy me”. You know the kind that President Trump relied upon to clean up the voting fraud. It would have been nice to find just one lawyer in Seattle that wasn’t terrified of “THEY”. You are lucky!

  • Lance de Boyle February 28, 2021, 11:43 AM

    I got me one of them permanent facial twitches.
    Came on when we got home from the wedding.
    She said, “No blow jobs, and I don’t cook.”
    I pondered, “So, how’s she different from a hog?”
    Besides hogs not sporting a hairy back, I mean.

  • Vanderleun February 28, 2021, 1:33 PM

    Les chiens n’obtiennent pas de blagues.