POEM

Ad Astra by Michael Grove
Posted February 4, 2000 · Issue 71

What brave anthropic universe is this,
where Heaven is not winking stars but eyes
holding ours from the other side of glass?
The whole Mission is through sunlight glorious
with space bodies condensing on the chill
pane of ellipsis: the death-defying
heroes battle with disorienting,
suggestive fractals of time. And distance
is our dimension, motion is in all
our equations. Still we find no limit
to the eyes we can look into. In this
vacuum they trig from the horizon of
observation the exact measure of
a transit which would be an act of God.

Michael Grove studied psychology at Sydney University in Australia and has worked in education, corrective services, and community health. He is convinced that developments in all the sciences have pressing implications for the poetic mind. He is working on a futuristic novel. A collection of his poems, On Vacation, will be published later this year in FlashPoint, a multidisciplinary journal in the arts and politics.