Sky Gazing by Connie Jordan Green

Beneath the benign moon
      our pale bodies look up
            into a sky where specks

of light have traveled more
      years than imagination
            can grasp, look up at stars

long dead, look and wonder
      that the universe’s
            slow rotation inspired

Da Vinci’s drawings,
      Galileo’s discoveries,
            and we, mere spectators,

lose ourselves in the breadth
      of a cosmos that knows
            no end nor beginning,

a concept that leads us
      to stare, blink, and return
            to the business of sleep.




Connie Jordan Green lives on a farm in East Tennessee where she writes and gardens. She is the author of two award-winning novels for young people, The War at Home and Emmy; two poetry chapbooks, Slow Children Playing, 2007, and Regret Comes to Tea, 2011, both published by Finishing Line Press; and two poetry collections, Household Inventory, 2015 winner of the Brick Road Poetry Award, and Darwin’s Breath, published in 2018 by Iris Press. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals. Since 1978 she has written a weekly newspaper column for The Loudon County News Herald. She leads writing workshops and teaches writing and literature courses for Oak Ridge Institute of Continued Studies. 


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