Cosmic Ink Poem by Harley White

‘A drop of ink albeit small
like dew aurorean can fall, '
to paraphrase Lord Byron's lines,
‘upon a thought, in redesigns

‘of words, producing that which makes'-
when written utterance earthshakes-
‘perhaps some thousands, millions think';
such power has the printer's ink.

What cosmic narrative is inked
in oddly-shaped dark cloud that's linked
to nearby clustered stars within
the Milky Way, so kith and kin

are bright and dim in stellar scene?
The cloud some say has gecko mien,
Bok globule Barnard eighty-six,
is to the right in image mix

of NGC Six Five Two O,
ashine with brilliant astral glow.
In Sagittarius the pair
are posed in Milky's brightest lair

amidst a part of Archer so
stelliferous that almost no
dark areas are to be spied
by sky observers starry-eyed.

Connected in another sense
as well, it seems the globule dense
or nebula was formed from cloud
molecular whence clustered crowd

once it collapsed was also built
to shape a piece of patchwork quilt
of blue-white orbs contiguous
with shady glade ambiguous.

To E. E. Barnard when ‘twas found
by him from telescope on ground,
it looked like ink drop numinous
upon the welkin luminous.

An inkling inked may truth convey
as view prismatic points to way
an open mind through metaphor
might glimpse a facet to explore.

Indeed a printed passage can
live longer than our fleeting span
and open portal wider still
for mortal being's wayward will.

Yet if our scopes could see behind
the clouded sight of humankind
beyond what semblance has concealed
a field of stars would be revealed.