More Like Exoplanets

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The planets, Saturn, Jupiter and those

Beyond we know about, a bit; but slight

Our grasp of them.  We know them like the floes

Of Arctic ice, but Neptune’s far side night

And Pluto and Uranus stay unknown,

Much darker than the South Pole black that lasts

Eleven weeks.  Our knowledge there is prone

To nearly nothingness like man’s lost pasts

In caves and thus is coarse, related to

Horn dimly.  We can know the feeling, thought

And motives of the man we hoped we knew

When heart leapt up in love, in reeling thought.

  The woman or the man beside you fates

    Your love before you know unmeasured weight.

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