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Nebula Sea

By Harley White posted 08-09-2021 14:37

  
NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA)


Nebula Sea
 
 
When setting sail with the poetry muse
amidst stelliferous oceans I cruise
as hilly space billows my whims peruse
wherever their whispering wills may choose.
 
My flapping canvas may take to a breeze
‘mongst pageantry of sidereal might
to voyage through starry byways with ease
until my vessel shall chance on a site
 
to other meanders of mind upstage
thus landing me on a creative shore
with fancied fixation to so engage
that wavelets of lyric verses outpour.
 
I come to a scene of beautiful shades
by Hubble offered for viewing pleasure
of fabulous lake in ebony glades,
for scientists a celestial treasure.
 
As every snowflake’s unique, so is too
each nebula planetary; this one
a stellar shroud issue of rainbow hue
was fashioned from perishing star like sun.
 
It’s found in the Pyxis Constellation
that’s otherwise tagged Nautical Compass,
a cloudscape in throes of reformation
from dying star making silent rumpus.
 
While labeled NGC Two Eight One Eight,
for me it might mirror a skyey sea
where stargazing fantasies lie in wait
to beckon ethereal reverie.
 
Could beauty derived from a star’s demise
eventually becoming white dwarf
bear semblance to further mortal goodbyes
as phantasmagorical polymorph?
 
Unlike Ophelia, first floating forlorn
in brook, by a willow from life and breath
cast down, wrote Shakespeare, by Hamlet forsworn,
to drown in a woeful watery death,
 
my own taking leave from this realm might be
on dream ship that sails on the great beyonds
to world on an island like Innisfree
where beings would share in my karmic bonds
 
perhaps midst empyreal lake or sea,
to borrow a vision from poet Yeats,
akin to the grand Hubble imagery,
with presences seeking enlightened fates.
 
‘A beauteous thing brings joy forever’,
to paraphrase famous line from John Keats,
as nature delights with each endeavor
through all her immortal artistic feats.
 
 
~ Harley White
 
 
* * * * * * * *
 
Some sources of inspiration were the following…
 
Image and info ~ Hubble Snaps a Splendid Planetary Nebula…
https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2009/05/2464-Image.html
 
From “Endymion” ~ poem by John Keats (1818)…
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44469/endymion-56d2239287ca5
 
Image and info ~ Planetary Nebula NGC 2818 from Hubble (APOD)…
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140713.html
 
Explanation: The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged striking details of the famed planetary nebula designated NGC 2818, which lies in the southern constellation of Pyxis (the Compass). The spectacular structure of the planetary nebula contains the outer layers of a star that were expelled into interstellar space. The glowing gaseous shrouds in the nebula were shed by the central star after it ran out of fuel to sustain the nuclear reactions in its core. Our own sun will undergo a similar process, but not for another 5 billion years or so. Planetary nebulae fade gradually over tens of thousands of years. The hot, remnant stellar core of NGC 2818 will eventually cool off for billions of years as a white dwarf.
 
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA)
 
 
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Andee Sherwood
08-09-2021 16:13

Brilliant, perfectly brilliant!!!