There, a little right <br />of Ursus Major, is <br />the Milky Way: <br />a man can point it out, <br />the biggest billionfold of all <br />predicaments he's in: <br />his planet's street address. <br /> <br />What gives? What looks <br />a stripe a hundred million <br />miles away from here <br /> <br />is where we live. <br /> <br />* <br /> <br />Let's keep it clear. The Northern Lights <br />are not the North Star. Being but <br />a blur, they cannot reassure us. <br />They keep moving - I think far <br />too easily. September spills <br /> <br />some glimmers of <br />the boreals to come: <br />they're modest pools <br />of horizontal haze, where later <br /> <br />they'll appear as foldings in the vertical, <br />a work of curtains, throbbing dim <br />or bright. (One wonders at <br />one's eyes.) The very sight <br />will angle off in glances or in shoots <br />of something brilliant, something <br /> <br />bigger than we know, its hints uncatchable <br />in shifts of mind ... So there <br /> <br />it is again, the mind, with its <br />old bluster, its self-centered <br />question: what <br /> <br />is dimming, what is bright? <br />The spirit sinks and swells, which cannot tell <br />itself from any little luster.<br /><br />Heather McHugh<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/nano-knowledge/
