A Tale of Two Eyes
On the Holiest day of Twenty One,
A giant 256” Space Eye is launched into a
Cold, dark, vast, expanding, singular Universe,
To a suspended state a million miles
Away from its home of birth.
Its inner structure unfolds like a Monarch Chrysalis,
To Peer back in time, to lost, ancient beginnings.
A tired old astronomer is bemused by it all,
Reflecting on his own ancient past,
As he himself peers through a
Atavistic reflector telescope,
As old as he.
“Astro-Boy Pete”,
His father would crown him,
As the precocious Peter sat mesmerized by
glossy, cosmic, color images filling the
pages of monthly delivered Nat-Geo magazines.
His unbridled passion would lead to
a hard-earned, Golden-State doctorate degree,
And to a glory-bound assignment,
With its corresponding all consuming career,
At the Hale Telescope on Mt. Palomar.
How fortuitous it was,
That the newly graduated Peter would stand before
The “Big Eye” of Palomar,
She, whom after a 13-year gestation period of
grinding and polishing, would be born the
same year as the ambitious Peter.
Hale reigned supreme, as the largest such instrument
in the world for some 45 years after its completion.
Now, some seventy five years has past.
Here amongst the scientific community,
A Renowned Astrophysicist reigns supreme,
With a stellar worldwide reputation,
gained through sacrificial devotion to his career.
A childless widower,
Lonely “Old Man Pete” gazes into our solar system.
With its 200 inch reflex mirror,
The 20-ton piece of molten Pyrex swings into view of
Our sister, Goddess of Love planet, Venus.
He momentarily pauses and reflects
on those lost earlier times:
His heart swells with
Pride and Purpose,
as he reminisced and again
heard the applause that filled
the large conference center room after
his lecture on the expanding cosmos.
Back to the moment, he meditates on the heavy
atmosphere of carbon dioxide enveloping
The hothouse and lifeless Venus.
It is well, he muses, that he is one of the early adopters
Of the so called Green Electric Vehicle,
as it sits just outside the observatory,
parked in the most coveted VIP parking.
Greenhouse gas emissions on his host planet
have now reached a tipping point,
whereby all life forms are threatened
with a catastrophic sixth mass extinction.
Little to no time is left for humanity to
take effective mitigative action.
Two miles away, the dry and parched hills
surrounding Mt. Palomar smolder, and are
about to blaze into an inferno.
Peter pauses his Venus study,
as the audible alarms sound.
It is too late.
Evacuation is not plausible.
There is no escape.
The famed and acclaimed Dr. Pete has no fear or remorse.
As the flames lap nearby, his final thoughts are
Contrived rationalizations for the
Career-Dominated Life
He Chose to live:
It is well, he once more mused,
That he had no Descendants,
To face the Death and Destruction
of this Avoidable Climate Breakdown.
_________________________________________________________________________
Life is a tale,
Told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
- Macbeth, William Shakespeare, 1606
__________________________________________________________________________
D W Orr
Environmentalist, Weimaraner/Dachshund Companion, Photographer, and Poet-Provocateur
Harford County, Maryland,
Here, where it all began, 253 years ago, in the USA
October 5, 2022
"Three That Float", by D. W. Orr Photography
The James Webb Space Telescope arrives at Lagrange Point L2 on January 24, 2022
The Big Eye of Palomar. Image composite by D. W. Orr.
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The Poet-Provocateur
”The Man who sees well beyond the day-to-day Bullshit”
~ D. W. Orr
“To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one”
~ John Ruskin