Two Pieces
Louhi Pohjola
Pillars of Creation, Eagle Nebula
Even those pillars that haunt space-time are eroding, say astronomers. The
towering Three Graces of interstellar gas and dust were captured in rapturous
detail by the modern-day Rafael and Rubens, the Hubble and James Webb
telescopes. Now, some might see elephant trunks, others stalagmites protruding
from a cavern floor. Other imaginations conjure undersea coral, enchanted castles,
space serpents, or arches and spires arising from a desert landscape. Those three
pillars play with the mind: five light years tall and bathed in UV light from young
massive stars, they birth monstrous stars in their incomprehensible nurseries.
Their fingers that point to destruction are larger than our own solar system.
We still hope they take pity on us, keep stirring up wonder.
To remind ourselves of hope, we place their image on everything from T-shirts
to coffee mugs. But astronomers say the photos capture light emitted 6500 years ago.
The Pillars may no longer exist. If Thalia, Euphrosyne, and Aglaea are gone,
who now blooms joy and beauty into the heavens?
Upending the Cosmological Principle
—The Cosmological Principle states that above a certain spatial scale, the universe is homogeneous and looks identical in every direction.
Defying assumptions of what’s possible,
cartographers of the cosmos draw
maps of where Boötes the Herdsman
sends his men to lasso the celestial bull
with the Big Ring through his nose,
the lasso and ring megastructures
in a mega-space, the ring a diameter
of 1.3 billion light years.
How that bull must snort and paw
through the maw of the heavens!
If we could see his ring with our eyes,
it would shine as fifteen full moons in the night sky.
O! To view an animal of such gargantuan
proportions—no matter if born
from acoustic waves or cosmic strings.
To get close enough to see the lasso arc
its way towards him, barely touch
his stiff whiskers before he tosses
his magnificent head, snorts fumes
through his Ring, shakes
stars out from his shaggy coat.
Louhi was born in Montreal, Canada, to Finnish immigrant parents. She was a cell and molecular biologist before teaching sciences and humanities in a small high school in southern Oregon. She is an avid fly-fisherwoman and river rock connoisseur and is obsessed with black holes and octopi. Louhi lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and her temperamental terrier. The latter thinks that he is a cat. (Her favorite celestial body is the black hole!)