GOLDILOCKS AND...
My deck is littered with glass
twisted metal, tortured hooks.
There is a flurry of sound –
Cardinals, Finches, Jays and Doves -
they are outraged!
Where is breakfast/lunch/dinner?
I had been pulling back
from those wintry feasts. The longer
sun casts light on other prey.
Yet I like to watch them all,
waiting their turns politely, a few
modest thoughts sparking out from eager beaks.
The Mother and her cubs are large.
Roaming the yard earlier, they picked off
all lower hanging birdseed banquets,
rolled around with their spoils
in the thick of night,
glistened in shine of moonlight.
The crime scene deck is twenty feet
off the ground. We did not dream
the calculations of that climb.
My trellises lie crumpled like paper,
claw mark hieroglyphics rise up and up,
speaking volumes of triumph and conquest.
The newest planetary discoveries
sizzle and shimmer in some time frame
long lost to us. Scientists peer into
super telescopes, hoping to find signs
of life as we might know it Eons later
in the Goldilocks zone of Sun-like stars.
I want to know if my three adventurous
marauders might just as easily
laugh out there in that not too hot
not too cold night, lit by some distant Moon,
as they execute their stealthy tour de force
while all around them are sleeping.
In May, 2016, new data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope revealed the existence of 1,284 new planets orbiting Sun-like stars in the Milky Way, the closest of which could be 12 light years away from Earth. Based on information about those planets, Astronomists and Astrobiologists have determined that at least nine may orbit in their Sun’s habitable zone where, given sufficient atmospheric pressure, the planetary surface and average temperatures can support liquid water for a period long enough to generate life. This zone is also known as the “Goldilocks Zone” because the region around the star must not be too hot or too cold but rather “just right,” as was the porridge in the children’s fable “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” NASA launched its Kepler telescope in 2009 and it has been regularly discovering new planets ever since. See, e.g., www.cnn.com/2016/05/10/health/nasa-kepler-discoveries.
“GOLDILOCKS AND…” was first published in
The Offbeat, Vol. 17 ( May 2017)