Atoms For Peace Poem by Harley White

Rarely does a galaxy's designation
carry a political connotation.
Albeit its challenge has seemed elusive,
still the end of the story's not conclusive.

In light of atomic disasters global
at power plants Fukushima, Chernobyl,
and who knows how many more yet to occur,
as our ongoing energy needs du jour

are superintended by partisan aims
that play with our planet in dangerous games,
the nickname "Atoms for Peace" is ironic…
Ike condemned nuclear warfare demonic

in eloquent terms in historical speech
addressed to the UN Assembly, to reach
with maximum impact the nations worldwide…
But what of the galaxy that he supplied

with the lasting moniker "Atoms for Peace"
(an oxymoronically styled caprice) ,
that is to say, NGC 7252,
with swirls of streamed stars flinging into the blue?

The past of this system was anything but
nonviolent, though it resembles somewhat
the other component of its sobriquet,
an atomic nucleus with an array

of electrons orbiting all round about,
or loops pirouetting and spiraling out.
Two hundred twenty million light-years in space,
in Aquarius, a collision took place

and a duo of galaxies ripped apart
in interplay of astronomical art,
with pure pandemonium then ensuing,
midst clusters of starburst formations brewing.

What we are viewing in that constellation
may be portending our own situation
of the Milky Way's future that is in store,
depicted in a poem I wrote before,

where mythic Andromeda of spiral shape
is moving straight to us for more than a scrape,
but rather a smash-up, or mash-up in fact,
like "Atoms for Peace" that's been caught in the act…

While here on this planet we're trapped in the spin
of selfish delusion that we dwell within,
and blind to our blindness we blunder ahead
toward daunting tomorrows that fill us with dread.

We humans are treading a treacherous path
that's begun to arouse Mother Nature's wrath.
What our posterity's history will be
is a Gordian knot of a mystery…

If ancient Greeks gazed upon us from afar
they might perceive Earth as solivagant star,
wandering ‘asteres planetai' to them,
videlicet our lapis lazuli gem.

Time passes more swiftly than we realize.
The violet withers; the sweet songbird dies.
Our mortal existence is gone in a whiz.
If only we'd see just how precious life is!