A RECONSIDERATION:                                                     POSTFACE TO A WORK IN PROGRESS

            [In Wonder at the Webb Space Telescope
             & a New Image of the Deeper Universe]

men grow old
& cry out “shit”
like children

dropping to the bottom of a well,
uncautious,
trained to fish for eels

to come up breathless
on the other side
where mothers reach out arms to hold them

“holy days” the simple man proclaims,
the shapeless wanderer
not simple only, he is open

this allows the world to look
into his eyes, to see
a depth there, like a hole in space

the farthest probe of all they call
“deep image,” galaxies condensing
in the perfect poem

* “deep image”: a technical term in astronomy for photographs of the outer limits of the visible universe.  Used earlier as a touchstone for a new poetics.

[from The Stars in Mindless Space: A Deeper Image, a gathering of later & uncollected poems, scheduled for publication next year in the "To" series of poems from the Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre in France.]