 Hannah Larrabee’s Wonder Tissue won the Airlie Press Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for a Massachusetts Book Award. Hannah was selected by NASA to write poetry for the James Webb Space Telescope program, and she's a recipient of a 2022 Arctic Circle Residency. She recently guest edited the climate change issue of Nixes Mate Review. www.hannahlarrabee.com The Observable Universe
We’ve all heard the question why is the sky blue? but why is it dark at night? is something else entirely. It becomes a story beneath the science, like infrared of Botticelli’s “Man of Sorrows” revealing a sketch of Madonna and child. What did he decide? Was it prayer rearranged into another prayer? We are left with what is observable, what we are meant to see. The universe itself is illuminated just right; what we see is light having traveled this far and that’s it. So much light still on its way. We’ll never see it all, no human being, but maybe a tarsier with big soft eyes or some distant relative gripping a tree, the night sky getting brighter. I’d hate it. Leave me inside the sensuous dark or at least be bold enough to bring me a brighter lover to obscure the sky: Andromeda, or maybe Saturn and its rings taking a closer seat, the scale model of desire collapsing. 12 degrees tonight and a ladybug clings to the kitchen light. The stars are clear as hell in this crisp air. When I ask what is observable? what I mean is what is still making its way to me? I’ve been told we create the kinds of relationships we want, and of course that’s true but it doesn’t consider the distance required to travel. It matters sometimes to be far away. I am standing watching the ladybug wondering which prayer was closer to Botticelli-- the one he hid from us, that seems right.
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