Lake of Light

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            There’s a lake of luminescence
            in this stunning Vela scene,
            whose radiant nebula essence
            resembles pool aquamarine.

            Known as Eight-Burst or Southern Ring,
            it’s a striking look-alike
            of Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring,
            where earthly nature-lovers hike.

            While its stellar center has two,
            the dim one is the painter
            that imbued with art this astral view,
            in the process growing fainter.

            Having shed its layers wholly
            in ultimate dying flow,
            the cloud took on its aspect slowly
            through bright fluorescent haloed glow.

            Here inspired by the poet Yeats,
            I glimpse a vision golden,
            shown with hues of blue and ‘sea-green slates’,
            created by white dwarf olden.

            Whether lake of water or light,
            it awakens reverie
            of finding peace in idyllic site
            beyond what’s deemed could ever be.

            In dreams I’ll arise and go there,
            to celestial Innisfree,
            and rest awhile in that airy lair,
            midst stars as far as eyes can see.

            Still, the wisdom of Nichiren
            offers haven where we are
            within each and every ichinen
            of our mortal human memoir.


            ~ Harley White

          

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Inspiration for poem from article and image ~ NGC 3132, a bright planetary nebula in Vela...

Also, article ~ A Glowing Pool of Light: Planetary Nebula NGC 3132...

Also, NGC 3132 at Wikipedia...

Imaging (NGC 3132) Through Filters ~ Nature displays a remarkable economy of form as displayed on the left by the striking similarity of Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring to the Hubble Heritage project’s new rendering of NGC 3132....

In addition, inspiration derived from various poems by William Butler Yeats…

A definition of ichinen...

Further inspiration derived from the teachings and writings of Nichiren Daishōnin…

Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō means to devote our lives to and found them on (Nam[u]) the Utterness of the Dharma (Myōhō) [entirety of existence, enlightenment and unenlightenment] permeated by the underlying white lotus flower-like mechanism of the interdependence of cause, concomitancy and effect (Renge) in its whereabouts of the ten [psychological] realms of dharmas [which is every possible psychological wavelength] (Kyō).

The reason that we continually recite Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō

Image and explanation ~ NGC 3132, also known as the Eight-Burst Nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula, is a bright and extensively studied planetary nebula in the constellation Vela. Its distance from Earth is estimated at about 550 pc. or 2,000 light-years.

It is the faint star, not the bright one, near the center of NGC 3132 that created this planetary nebula. In this color picture, the hot blue pool of light seen surrounding this binary system is energized by the hot surface of the dim star. All that remains of the parent star is a collapsed, extremely hot, core. This white dwarf star emits large amounts of ultraviolet radiation causing the surrounding clouds of gas to glow through fluorescence much the same as a neon sign glows with its colorful light. This image is taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 onboard the Hubble Space Telescope using three different color filters. North is to the bottom left hand corner of this image. In the Heritage Team’s rendition of the Hubble image, the colors were chosen to represent the temperature of the gases. Blue represents the hottest gas, which is confined to the inner region of the nebula. Red represents the coolest gas, at the outer edge. The Hubble image also reveals a host of filaments, including one long one that resembles a waistband, made out of dust particles which have condensed out of the expanding gases.

Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)