Hale-Bopp
(poem 13. from "Touch")

In 1997 what appeared to be a light-hole blown through the
night-roof was the epoch vista of a comet that had been circling
into view for 4,200 years. It will take 2,380 years for it to break
the mundane view of constellations again. For an entire spring
and summer I looked up from wherever I could every night and
early morning and gazed at Hale-Bopp.
A comet, an immense ball of ice and carbon from the outback of
the universe, rotating fully every eleven and one half hours with
an evaporating ice tail millions of miles long was shooting
through my sky on the far side of the sun, in the orbit of Jupiter.
Hale-Bopp was visible to my naked eye and it was one hundred
twenty three million miles away. (I can’t read small print one foot
away). Hale-Bopp was visible for several months to me as it
passed at the speed of about 75,000 mph through the
non-atmosphere of space.
Every night I stared at it wanting to hold that moment as long as
I could, for it was magnificent to me. I could not help but believe
there was a power, impossible to conceive, revealing a glimpse
of its immeasurable energy to insignificant me.
I am created from the same energy!
Made of the same matter!
Between that spectacular comet and me, I am the one who sees
the difference empowered out of our sameness.
I am the carbon and water awestruck by the carbon and water
that cannot ever know of our common existence.
For every moment it was frighteningly exciting.
I experienced my insignificance against Hale-Bopp and
discovered a sameness that returns significance tenfold to me.
To understand I am a product of the same creator gives me an
exquisite sense of well-being.

~ Copyright © 2008 by Susan Durant. From Touch. Used by permission of the author.

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