May came, and for all the people it took with it, it couldn’t have left too soon. I was beginning to wonder if these people knew something the rest of us hadn’t figured out yet, perhaps getting an early start on the Mayan 2012 rush. Then Ray Bradbury left us and I had a strange feeling like there really was a connection.
The Transit of Venus.
It visits twice, eight years apart, with a century-plus in between pairings. Charging across the sun, I imagined the Greeks seeing the goddess flying across the sky, making a brief visit to check in and then departing on her journey across the universe. The hop-skip-jump of imagery made it all seem so logical: Venus was a tour bus dropping off its last group of passengers back in 2004, refueling, then picking up the next tour group this year. The announcements went out in May and those with tickets climbed aboard.
the transit of venus
dashing across the sun
first to off-boardreturning eight years later
to pick up new travelersa final boarding call
was sent out in maycollecting visionaries
for a galactic tourwriters and artists
musicians, teachers, dreamerstraveling time’s distorted rails
will return home refreshedtheir brief two weeks
a mere century on earththeir visions rekindled
to guide us furtherbeyond the sun
beyond our imaginations
At the same time I realized all this Laura Purdie Salas offered up a nebula-sized bit of inspiration for her weekly 15-words-or-less challenge. I went with an acrostic I thought appropriate.
raygone
(22 august 1920 – 5 june 2012)beyond
rockets
and spaceshipsdaring visionaries
birth entire
universes that become our
radiantyesterdays
Godspeed, galactic travelers.
Bonus time! Found this awesome NASA video of Venus zipping past the sun. Stunning.
In a smaller universe called the Internet, it’s Poetry Friday. Head on over to Jama’s Alphabet Soup for more.
Wow! Both poems are brilliant. Yes, visionaries departing for a galactic tour. :)
brilliant? bradbury was brilliant. i am humbly in his service today.
Excellent tribute, Dave.
thanks. i was hesitant to try anything for fear of not fully capturing a complete portrait, but in “the zen of writing” bradbury encourages the reading/writing of poetry daily and so, in his memory…
Wow! Thanks for the amazing video. I had not gone searching for visuals of this event and am glad to have now experienced Venus’s transit. Your stellar poems mark the occasion well. I love the image of
“writers and artists
musicians, teachers, dreamers”
taking a “galactic tour” to have
“their visions rekindled
to guide us further
beyond the sun
beyond our imaginations.”
i only wish i’d sen the footage before writing and posting the poem. i feel i could have done so much with that imagery, but i’m not unhappy with what i ended up with.
Fabulous. I like the idea that our losses in May were actually intergalactic travelers. Love the bonus video.
there had to be some reason may was such a dreadful moth for such public losses. makes me want to write a bradbury-esque story about it…