Astronomy Dancer

By Sally Morem


In the vast Belfield Archaeoplanetarium
The Astronomy Dancer readies herself for her performance
She is secured to the curving wall by nothing but nanostickum and soft
hands
Under the slightest pressure
The grip fractures

She awaits her cue.
Starlight winks on
Ursas Big Dipper glows
Pointing the way

She takes a deep breath
Then slowly exhales
She launches herself upstream
Lightly pushing off with her right toe
And gracefully glides towards

The Moon
Earths closest companion enraptures her
And the audience intent rumble her name
Estimated numbering in the billions
In the latest millisecond Nielsen Ratings

She slowly, oh so slowly spreads her arms
As if to embrace the Goddess Selene
A voice intones
The Moon orbits the Earth
At an average distance of 235,850 mile


She makes a slight adjustment in her trajectory
And swings into orbit
As her velocity slows
The gray desert turns underneath
Tranquility Base clearly visible on the silvery orb

It is enough
Her audience is very familiar, too familiar with that image
One sharp kick, and she swerves towards Mars
She spins on her axis, she rolls head over heals,
She tilts and wobbles as a Frisbee would
Thrown against the breeze

Six degrees of freedom
Are freedom enough for her
Dalimar, oh Dalimar
Her fans in legions prick her like a crown of thorns

She needs no rocket with a million pounds of thrust
Poised at the Cape
To hurl into space
She is already there
Searching, dancing

Now she seeks the vast gaseous planets
Failed stars, all of them
Jupiter alone producing more energy
Than it ever received
From Sol

The Astronomy Dancer
With gravity assist
Swings round Saturns rings
Shoots off into Neptunes grip
And repeats to the tune of applause

She passes by the planet that was demoted
For failure to achieve
Pretending she doesnt notice
The Voice reminds all:
Pluto is now ranked among the minor planets

So graceful is she, her hair flows in solar wind
No other has ever
Nor will ever again
Dance as she does
At least not during this particular eon

The stars are clear hard dots of pure light
Deepest silence
No atmosphere here
To make them dance
The way she does

Her feet flutter
She aims straight up
The Goddess milk spilling along the way
In blotches and patches
Colliding into the Learned Astronomers photon detectors
He deems himself blessed

A misty band of stars bulges towards the center
The disk fattens as Sagittarius Arm and Persius Arm stretch
Then curl inward
The Astronomy Dancer mimics them
But not in disdain

Clustering in great spirals
Clustering in galaxies
Bunching in clusters of galaxies
In superclusters of galaxies connecting in great tendrils
Matter carves the universal emptiness
Into sectors of existence

Supernovae remnants gather themselves
Like a woman of old gathering her skirts
Gravity takes hold at a measured pace
Forming a shallow spacetime indentation
Matter slides towards matter
The indentation deepens

Stellar nurseries bulge in pregnant pause
Giving birth to dearly beloved
Young planetary systems
Who screech forth their existential questions
As nuclear fusion takes hold, the bulge breaks
A star is bornanother star is bornand another

The Astronomy Dancer is roiling in detritus of swirling dust
Forming a rough accretion disk
Out of starstuff
The newborn stars afterbirth

Rocks blasting and smashing their way
Planetesimals form hot and sticky
Caroming and grazing their enemies with wild shots gone missing
Hitting broadside into
Planets, moons, rings, asteroids, comets
The planetary rings are all swept up neatly by matronly gravity

She swerves hard, shoehorning
Barely missing the event horizon
Of a black hole with no accretion disk to light it
Show its emptiness
Tell us of its yawning threat

Black holes are all that remain
After a large star crushes itself to death
Demolished, but its remnants manage to cobble together a gravity field of
some strength
Her movement was very carefully timed
The audience gasps in horror
And then in wonder

Back to the system of her birth
Back to old Sol composed of
Superdense convection granules seething in the photosphere
Each one thousand miles in diameter
Blazingly, blindingly, the cauldron spills protons

She barely notes in passing
Fast Mercury clinging to its mother stars skirts

The Astronomy Dancer erupts out of the deep
Near Venus, unbearably hot, pressure, sulfuric, poisonous
Home of women or so say old mythos
They escape being flattened and asphyxiated barely living
Happily shedding light and return home

Earth is not the right name for you, oh parental water planet
As she vectors in towards that gloriously familiar blue
Sky blue pastel
Of that generous face
Of lifegiving wetness

She feels the heat of atmospheric drag
She becomes a flaming nucleic comet to her audience
Radiating fear and love
Arching her back
To mimic ablation field

The smell of singeing hair stinging her nose
The sight of broiling existence
The sound of roaring waterfalls ten miles high
The feel of turbulence agitating her to her very core
The soggy brackish taste of salt water on her lips sting her memories


She blasts through the surface and arrows down
Slipping into the murky mist of Ocean
The Astronomy Dancer is home
Her audience screams pitch higher yet higher
Victory!