Astronomy: White Spiral Arms Poem by Margaret Alice

Stuck next to the fax machine with escape
in my hand – a Visual Universe Dictionary
presenting an overhead view of our lovely
galaxy in yellow in blue

With white spiral arms protecting the centre
lovingly – our solar system hiding within the
Arm of Orion while being persecuted by
Perseus as well as Centaurus

And preceded by Sagittarius – then the most
beautiful illustration of the whole universe
that began in a yellow explosion, a fireball
of hot gas expanding for

One million years, followed by a dark cloud
of dust and gas, condensing into protogalaxies,
a universe delineated in a purple sphere
indicating how it would have appeared

Five billion years after the Big Bang; quasars
containing Black Holes appearing as shiny
white dots, galaxies spiralling and spinning,
then a bigger sphere to represent

Today’s universe – some twenty billion years
after the beginning in an explosion; gravity being
the loving glue binding galaxy clusters together
for ever - in a magical crystal sphere

As well as a microwave map of cosmic radiation
in dark and pale blue, with pink and red added in
proof of the Big-Bang hypothesis through the
existence of cool radiation

Streaming equally from all directions
in support of mainstream scientists’
speculative theory of cosmology…