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Planetarium

In many houses darkened rooms with just one window have a shadowy life as planetariums when the sun sends

a shaft of rays through the glass illuminating in mid-spiral all those invisible dust motes. You could be

looking at a slide under a microscope showing a cross-section of the room with tiny planets floating and falling

like grains of salt from a shaker some unseen hand is using to season the light but I see a time-lapse photo

of the life of the cosmos, specks of matter appearing out of nowhere, swirling in solar winds, coalescing

and then quietly slipping back into the void, a sort of reenactment the forces of physics are putting on

in the bathroom or pantry or the dim theater of the cellar so these spaces might reveal how the universe came to be

and where it’s going although that part is left to the imagination and requires that your eyes adjust to the wonder.

8 More Selected Poems — Charles Brown

Planetarium was printed in Midcoast Poetry Journal Volume 2

© Charles Brown