Stellar Light Poem by Harley White

Seventeen seventy-four is
when William Herschel noted his
strange discovery with the cry,
‘Truly a hole is in the sky! '

It was in Scorpius confine,
found with his sister Caroline
who verily should have her name
with William's also sharing fame.

So dark stretches have been discerned
for scores of decades, later learned
to be formation astral zones
at the rear of those somber tones.

Thus NGC One Nine Nine Nine,
termed for year viewed, should toe that line,
‘twas judged, with dim region which must
be just a denser cloud of dust

in a nebula or perhaps
another black one as the lapse.

A reflection nebula called,
the glow around had to be hauled
from variable star behind
lending an aspect to remind

of fog lit up by lamp at night.
To left of center shows the light,
while inked against the astral shine
lies the uncanny dark design.

These nebulae with a cast blue
take on this particular hue
since the interstellar dust grains
will reflect starlight of those stains.

Therefore astronomers were sure
that deeper than foreground obscure
a structure noticeable lay
with other elements in play,

surmised a Bok globule compact
where stars might be molded in fact.

Afterward, with telescopes keen
scientists wondered what they'd seen
as nothing was glimpsed through the fog.
Could it be a much thicker clog?

But no it was not what they thought.
Indeed observations had caught
a peek at yes an empty space
in midst of a misty embrace.

For when radio scope had peered,
what they witnessed was something weird;
expecting to see stars, instead,
the hole, even in infrared,

through the ESA Herschel device
was still there, as spied in a trice,
with no causal reason clear-cut
apparent for why what was what—

quite a surprising mystery
in stellar-watching history!

The ‘hole' it's conjectured was shaped
by gas jets from young star escaped
which pierced through the nebulous cloud
and removed the stuff in the shroud.

This scheme is within Orion
(in myth a gigantic scion
of a Gorgon and Neptune born)
constellation seen to adorn

the celestial equator spheres
about fifteen hundred light-years
away from our dear planet home
neath the grand sidereal dome

where beings dwell in woods and trees
or fly through skies and swim in seas,
albeit dwindling rapidly
while humans look on vapidly…

To turn to a free verse poet
who lyricized the inchoate,

Walt Whitman wrote in work well-known
some divinations of his own
with singular expansive tone
of self beyond the self o'ergrown,

ere theorists had opened door
into the multiverse's lore,
to ‘let one's soul stand cool before
a million universes more'

‘and stay composed', because he saw
ahead of Hubble or his law
perhaps through visionary awe
a cosmos vast on which to draw.

He lived during a special stage
of astronomy's golden age;
sightings new turned many a page
and stargazing became the rage.

The undiscovered flux engrossed
Walt Whitman's fantasy the most.

In revolt at certainty's pride
his nature reveries would stride
into artistic realms untried
with a breadth of awareness wide.

Back then our galaxy was deemed,
in Man's convictions long esteemed,
the only one, yet Whitman dreamed
of systems further than what seemed.

In ‘Learn'd Astronomer', we feel
no matter what the proofs reveal
that diagrams and charts conceal
the twinkling heavens' true appeal

as poem's speaker has to leave
the lecture-hall thus to retrieve
his mood of wonderment naïve
and by himself the stars perceive.

For what wherefore, or why, or whence
could serve to sense the great immense?