Ed’s Corner

Happy Earth Day this coming Wednesday, April 22nd! At The Nature Place we have many ways we celebrate the earth.

What planet are you on?

Most of the time I’m not aware of standing on a planet,
a mote of swirling Milky Way careening through the void.
I don’t have much context or a solid frame of reference
in which to clothe such dizzying contemplations.
I read about, sing songs about, this marble circling the sun,
this spaceship earth resplendent in a garden universe,
but whatever I might think I know with my minuscule mind,
the reality is mostly, still, poetical abstraction.

In the dark, round cool of Hayden Planetarium I can
lean back in vibrating chairs, look up, watch and listen
as aisle lights fade and fleets of stars wink on and off above me,
while an omnipresent, god-like voice thunders in my ears.
Planets veer toward and past me, orbit in and out of view,
meteors come sizzling through the startled atmosphere,
all is motion, whizzing, speeding, as the music swells and crashes
(as if this orchestrated movement needed any sound at all)!

Why not go outside at night, find a dark and quiet spot,
lie back and look up at the real thing, you might ask? I do that, too.
I take in the quiet beauty, the vastness of the countless stars,
but at such a far remove the starry welkin scarcely moves.
I don’t have the dynamic sense of wandering, spinning spheres.
But I can imagine it, get some feeling for it, when I stop
to wonder at the cycles and rhythms of earthly seasons,
the subtle, incremental change from winter into spring,
the swifter, more decisive shift from nighttime into day.
There are no godly voices, nor symphonic lights and sounds,
but there are whispers in my soul…I am truly thankful
for the complementary gifts of planetariums and planets.