Perspective

Carol Hart

By an eye in an orbit a million miles 
away we witness nebulae 
gathering into stars, stars into galaxies. 

Look, there in the southern ring nebula, 
that red giant in full bloom. Over grand
immensities of time and space, its remnants
coalesce to be the rootstock of new stars. 

I feel the awe, the wonder—my eyes tear up, 
I sniffle a bit, then sneeze. Because here 
it’s allergy season. The window’s open—

too nice a day to close it—and pollen rolls in 
unseen on swirling currents of warm air,
tugged into the dark twin vortices of 
my nose, from which there’s no return. 

They are all around us, these aliens in 
their silent airships, searching, probing,
drawn catastrophically into your black holes 

or mine. Or crash-landing on a hostile 
plant, unable to take off and try again.
They have a mission. They seek a princess 
in distress. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

You’re my only hope.” Something like that. 
Except there are myriads of worlds and  
princesses, who mostly go unrescued. 

If, by the sheer astronomical number of 
attempts, a pollen grain touches down on 
the right landing strip of the right plant, 
the capsule opens and a ramp unfolds 

to enter the cell of the anxious princess. 
Two heroes emerge. The princess chooses, 
she embraces her bridegroom. The other, 

who is now not a hero but a helper, 
must sacrifice himself for their escape 
in a spacecraft that must find its way
through a vast expanse of dying asters.

Admire if you will the incomprehensible 
stars. But there’s beauty and complexity 
all the way down. Right under your nose.

The Science

“To see a world in a grain of sand,” said Blake. Infinity, scaled down, can be held on the palm of the hand. And that is my theme here. The images captured by the James Webb telescope are astonishing; but at the other end of the scale, the microscopic world is spectacular too, with its own strange and beautiful symmetries. Pollen grains, for example, have intricately sculptured outer coats. Each grain carries two sperm. (Think: two little green men who come in peace.) Upon contact with the stigma of a flower of its species, a pollen tube develops, which grows down through the style to reach the ovary. One sperm unites with an ovum (aka princess), while the other transforms itself into the endosperm, the fuel that powers the seed to survive and germinate. 

The Poet

Carol Hart earned a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, which somehow led to a career as a health and science writer. She’s the author of two novels, Marius & Delia, by D.M. and A History of the Novel in Ants. Her poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Arion, and Scintilla, among other journals. She lives in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Next poem: Shoelaces by Susan Gordon Byron