What does it mean to me, Lord?
I can step out under
the broad sky
exposed to
elemental forces
and not be
incinerated,
asphyxiated or
frozen.
In the sweep of Orion’s arm of the Milky Way,
only on this earth,
my earth and no
other,
I am not a cinder
nor
a freeze-dried
human prune.
Intelligent design?
At night I wink into the celestial,
impulses dash from
retina to brain
at the speed of
light,
countless stars
wink back prismatic hues,
iridescent gas and dust.
In the day a shadow covers my part of the globe,
sun and moon are one in
my sky.
Eighty moons and
more orbit
the gods of flint
and fume
save Mercury and
Venus.
Why does one, only mine, fit the sun?
In orbital eccentricities earth and moon dance, sometimes
further,
sometimes closer to each other, to the sun -
a moon just smaller
reveals
a ring of
fire-red H-alpha,
its chromospheric
solar flares
cause aurora to
shimmer in lower latitudes -
a moon just larger
blots out the brilliance
to display a
luminous corona,
more than a
million degrees hotter
than the sun’s photosphere
three thousand miles below -
Neither ascertainable except from the shadow of my moon.
I fit my finite world (or it fits me), breath and life,
neurons and spirit unite
in reverence,
a uniquely
sapient,
flesh-mantled,
hot-blooded,
intelligent
design.
But an exclusive
eclipse... what purpose served?
Do skies proclaim the
work of hands
or heavens the
work of fingers?
"Let them be
for signs and seasons…",
a hand over my
eyes, a holy thumbprint,
the sidereal signet of my intelligent
Designer.
by Ken Paxton
