Earth as seen from earth

Earth as seen from Voyager 1 while on the edge of our solar system (approximately 3,762,136,324 miles from home). 

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives….

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. “

 ~Carl Sagan

and again look—

where do you see yourself?

Flitting between the minute pixels of the blue,

Perforating the ink with your curling smile,

blink-

how it goes away.

“look again at that dot.”

fascinate- just as we are by reflections in the mirror-

blue, the blue of your eye shadow

as you check yourself again and fidget,

not ready to sit down with me; you aren’t ready but you

disappear as you exit the frame.

I want to hang this picture of a dot

on our first apartment wall, alone

in the white, empty space of the virgin paint—

paint one blue dot that says it all.

When guests come in

we won’t be able to check ourselves in the mirror

as we get the door

so we’ll look at that blue dot,

see what we look like.

What do we look like?

I’ve never seen—

I should get it tattooed on my body,

to be sure I’d have it.

You’ve got plenty on your body,

across your back, quotes behind your ears

the makeup that spans and shifts your face

but it’d be the one

unnatural placement of ink on me that I didn’t clear out onto the page.

One tiny satellite amidst the constellations of freckles on my back,

marking— there is something missing.

One tiny dot. Is it me?

Can you fit in it?

I would look again,

the words everything we will ever know, everything any of us has ever known

is in this one little dot. Is it on me? And where have you gone—

And why do I feel like there is something missing?

From these dates, from building a relationship,

experience by experience,

silly little fact here- the serious conversation about childhood-

favorite colors- how long before I have to memorize your birthday?

Where are we in the big picture?

Earth.

There isn’t much to find, there is just

this one blue dot.

It’s trouble to keep occupied.

You are here though,

somewhere across the mm that seems so very long and wide.

I will always look again—

The dot—

like a pupil, not a spot, but a hole-

a search or a sight or,

however it is, where are you?

Don’t be afraid of loneliness*, is being whispered to me,

we will take each other down

to the lake, with the waters that shiver

—where I would marry you,

right in the water where we would embrace

and not feel so alone

surrounded by all the tiny blue dots that are something more—

The angel who wrestled hid his face

even from Jacob-something, even in dreams

hiding keeps up the search but we cannot hide, here.

You hide your face, it is not so small;

Sometimes I have never seen it.

I hardly know who you are sometimes.*

These poems are all attempts—

You may come, you may change

this question that looms over us but—

“a mote of dust”?

I think, what’s really in it?

Questions about love?  Or loneliness?

And from the expanse of silence and space,

and from earth,

you tell me look again—