Newfound galaxies

September 16, 2023

i

I am busy with morning when I hear the news:
Two billion new galaxies have been discovered.

They’re thirteen billion light years away.
Thirteen billion. I try to calculate it.
In my head I take a hundred years and take that
times ten, and that’s a thousand. Then nine hundred
of those and… it’s far too much.
I’m thinking of centuries
as I spread peach marmalade on my toast.

I think of the number of years
between the pyramids and the Hoover Dam.

I think of the years between Nero and Woodrow Wilson.
I’m unable to wrap my arms around it, so I give up…

ii

There is a bird outside my window. It is a nuthatch.
I know that because my grandmother pointed
one out to me half a century ago. Fifty years ago.

A nuthatch, a piece of toast, and two billion new galaxies.
My wife comes into the kitchen – she’s looking
for the coffee creamer and she hasn’t slept well.
She says it’s because of blue light and how
she shouldn’t peer into a computer screen before bed.

I tell her about the two billion new galaxies
and the endless planets that might be circling stars
and there might be nuthatches and peach marmalade
elsewhere in the universe. And somewhere, perhaps
another grandmother is pointing out birds.