Michael Mingo
Lick Observatory, Mt. Hamilton, Cal.
after Edison Studios' 1897 short film
Here, for the first time
since Galileo, five years
before the studio staged
this early September
carriage ride, we found
another moon in orbit
around Jupiter. Here,
the promise of the lens,
of the eye augmented
with the finest glass
that money can polish,
compels the astronomers
working somewhere beneath
that great glass dome
to stretch themselves further
and further through the cosmos.
Whatever stars their eyes
are now absorbing, we
see none of that light. Why
does Earth appear so stark
in this footage? The horses
pulling the carriage lose
their bodies in the carriage,
itself swallowed by the walls
of the observatory, a single
mass of formless shadow.
By contrast, the skies
have melted away the glass,
like ice shavings dropped
into tepid water. Then,
before the visitors can enter,
the last frame vanishes,
putting on full display
the deepest realms of space,
as though the difference
between seeing everything
in the observable universe
and seeing literally nothing
is solely in the language.
Neither a telescope nor
a camera can bring us
any additional clarity.
--
Michael Mingo is a poet and medical editor currently living in northwest New Jersey. He earned his MFA in poetry from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. His work has appeared in Spillway, The McNeese Review, Third Coast, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among other journals.