Pocketful of Stars

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             As I was searching for a theme
             to guide me into novel jaunt,
             enough of a creative beam
             that would imagination haunt,

             perhaps a scene sidereal
             I hadn’t written on before
             celestially ethereal
             with research questions to explore,

             at once a Hubble view appeared,
             ‘a pocketful of stars’ ‘twas named,
             which to my fantasies adhered
             and thence my motivation claimed.

             I thought I’d have some fun with it
             and give myself the latitude
             to take a thought and run with it
             in freer flowing attitude.

             Suppose I had a pocketful
             of starry wishes I could cast
             along with rainbow rocket full
             of colors for a canvas vast

             to paint with palette huge in hues
             galactic spheres that densely spread
             where multi-versifiers choose
             upon which pathway lyrics tread

             and astral artists could cavort
             amongst the stellar hills and dales
             as dreams ineffable escort
             the muses through prolific trails

             of cluster globular expanse
             (a cluster mouthful hard to say)
             plus all my wishupons perchance
             could dance to music far away,

             what wondrous poems might emerge
             while I would stride from star to star
             in anapest or dactyl surge
             from inspiration left ajar,

             or maybe in pentameter
             iambic in the metric line
             to vary the parameter
             as systems prosody define?

             But let me brief description give
             ere I meander off anew,
             with words to help depiction live
             in lieu of looking at the view.

             A myriad of stars is flocked
             like bees that swarm around a hive
             which gravity together locked
             in NGC One Eight O Five.

             It’s found in Magellanic Cloud
             the larger one, a satellite
             that orbits home we’ve been endowed
             with in our Milky’s solar site.

             The stars in these are rarely born
             at stages that are not the same.
             Yet here the cluster they adorn
             is hosting in its portrait frame

             two populations quite distinct,
             or so at least the group appears
             since both are mutually linked
             in their unusual careers

             but formed millions of years apart
             in separate creation streams
             though clustered round a central heart
             too closely to have planet schemes.

             This astral pocket they compare
             to bees that buzz nearby their nest
             then flora’s pollination share,
             those crucial creatures’ great bequest.

             Bees play a more important role
             than human beings used to know.
             It’s said of food production’s whole
             about a third to them we owe.

             Thus keeping feet on mortal ground
             I’ll sing a song stelliferous
             of starry heavens garland crowned
             or lullaby somniferous

             so sorely needed in our realm
             to spirits soothe in times of stress,
             when madness seems to take the helm
             and deeds demonic gain success,

             unless an ‘over and above’
             is active as a cosmic rule
             with causes and effects thereof,
             for fate may be nobody’s fool…

             Meanwhile I’ll fling my wishes high
             as starry verses I devise
             forgetting not my earthly tie
             and gaze upon the ceaseless skies.


             ~ Harley White



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Some sources of inspiration were the following…

Article and image ~ A Pocketful of Stars...

Article and image ~ Hubble Stows a Pocketful of Stars...

Some 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 explanation: Many colorful stars are packed together in this Hubble image of globular cluster NGC 1805, located 163,000 light-years away in the constellation of Dorado. This globular cluster is a tight grouping of thousands of stars, found near the edge of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. NASA said it’s unlikely that the stars at the center will be orbited by planets, because they’re 100 to 1,000 times closer together than the nearest stars are to our sun. The striking difference in star colors is illustrated beautifully in this image, which combines two different types of light— blue stars, shining brightest in near-ultraviolet light, and red stars, illuminated in red and near-infrared. Space telescopes like Hubble can observe in the ultraviolet because they are positioned above Earth’s atmosphere, which absorbs most of this wavelength, making it inaccessible to ground-based facilities.

Credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / J. Kalirai