Our Star, The Sun
In Celebration of The Heliophysics Big Year
have you ever looked up
in wonderment
at how the Earth has harnessed
the extraordinary power of the sun?
each evening our planet turns away
to rest, to let the light slip behind the horizon,
sink into the ocean,
and scatter waves shadowing mountains,
only to rise on the other side
a fresh red flower of the hemisphere,
flipping sun worshippers in the sands of time.
star galaxy of orbits spin in the seasons,
every once in a while a solar storm
opens a two-way highway,
Earth has a direct path to the sun.
magnetic reds, greens, and blues flow
quarks of color charge both ways
rippling auroras across our star
and our planet's blackness.
have you ever looked up
in bewilderment,
to stand in the morning’s warm resurrection
as sun salutations burn off the misty fogginess
or escapes from behind Mammatus clouds
to pull the Earth out of darkness?
backyard world,
there goes a hypervelocity object
shooting for intergalactic space.
luciferin light bearer, morning star
Venus up before dawn,
help pull oceans over bioluminescence blue
waves of contrasts with fireflies in the redwoods
and glowworms in the fresh green grass.
luminescent fungi on trees,
angels, fairies, gods, and saints
radiate light halos, otherworldly.
to know star power,
wake to say your goodbyes to a late summer moon,
moon dog, our satellite mirror of reflection
that helps Earth hold waxing and waning balance
against the pull of heliophysics burn.
to know star power
watch honeybees navigate by the sun
foraging with a love for the shade.
have you ever looked up
lost for words, in awe
at images of sunspots, fibriles, granules, and textures,
at our star’s warning coronal mass ejections
and plasma flames that churn
alive in flares, solar winds, and space weather?
our star, the sun, a living object stationed in space
that eventually will become a red giant
and then a white dwarf stellar remnant
not massive enough to explode into a black hole.
immovable,
as you stand there,
empty-handed echt dove—
even cultured bees know,
we are only here to learn how to love.
