Not in Vain Do We Watch the Setting and Rising of the Stars
I am Maria Mitchell
watching my daughter’s comet tail
streak across the sky.
I stand firmly in the dark
on my nineteenth century planet
searching for
a telescopic glimpse
of her glimmering petticoats.
My darling comet
streaks on
into the riddles of the future.
I stand on rooftops
peering upward.
Telescopes, corsets, button hooks.
These are the tools
of my days.
Her unfathomable technologies
are yet to come.
Beyond comprehension.
Undecipherable tongues which
she’ll speak fluently.
She will pause on earth to stand
at my headstone
and marvel at all
I could not have imagined.
‘Oh, how she would have loved…’
she’ll say,
gathering up her fiery skirts
and orbiting off into the celestial dark.
Racing to make the numinous known
