Ghostly Reflections Poem by Harley White

In celestial image to intrigue
that the Hubble Telescope caught,
Merope of the Pleiades league
wispy streams of tendrils has wrought

by passing the interstellar cloud,
thus creating its eerie shape
that's so evocatively endowed
as ghostly gossamer dreamscape,

due to the radiation pressure
on that vaporous reflection,
like particles put through a thresher
sifting them by size selection.

An astral beam casts the light of day
as the cloud drifts through the cluster,
leading to the destructive display,
while lending it haunting luster.

Illumined tracings of trails appear
midst the ravaging diffusions,
conjuring legends of yesteryear,
or classic folk tale allusions.

A mythical frieze empyreal
meanders into whimsy's view
of the Pleiades sidereal
fleeing in misty byways blue.

Of the seven heavenly sisters,
Merope as the youngest miss
married a mortal for her mister,
hiding her face in shame at this.

Hence she was seen as the faintest star
and often called the ‘Pleiad lost',
at first not shown on the charts afar,
in her saga starrily-crossed.

But the nebula she's destroying
adds more brightness as they entwine,
so Merope is now enjoying
a moment of glory to shine.

The rays that point to the upper right
in this Hubble illustration
are strewn by the Pleiad out of sight,
causing the cloud's alteration.

Tennyson wrote that those stars of night
while ‘rising through the mellow shade'
glitter like swarm of firefly light
‘entangled in a silver braid'.

When wearied of our troublesome woes,
with pensive gaze turned overhead
perhaps we'll muse where Merope goes
and twinkly Pleiades still tread.