A View From Orbit Poem by Val Morehouse

_____For Astronaut Sunita Williams who captured the images


Swirling veils of storm, the sapphire carved
from the black hole of space twinkles

like some never ending carnival
celebrated in a cemetery rife with epitaphs.

Nightfall cuts away along dawn’s edge,
gowning the blue planet in daylight.

Below, the green Nile stretches nimble as a papyrus
reeds dripping moisture into the morning.

There, the Mediterranean grips tight,
cupping just enough sea song for a sailor’s epic.

If each of us could wake to see
earth from orbit, belovéd globe ripe

with ice plains and baking desert bisected
by fragile veins of green,

Eden would be more than just
remembered pages turning in the wind.