World Poetry Day

In case you need an excuse, today is World Poetry Day.  According to UNESCO, the purpose of the day is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world.  Why should you care?  Poetry is one of those arts that not only promotes linguistic diversity, but encourages new forms of expression, new ways of bridging the gaps between us, new meaning.  So in honour of the day, I offer you the title poem from my new book which I've written in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson (and which will be launched, with much fanfare, on Earth Day 2013, though advanced copies are available now).

I'll read it to you if you want here:
http://magdalenaball.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/SublimePlanet.mp3

Or you can read it yourself below.  Once you read mine, I'd like you to share yours in the comments below.  You can share one of your own poems, or a link to a poem you love by someone else, or just talk poetry.  Let's open a poetic dialogue.

Sublime Planet

After so many years of silence

we’ve gotten used to it

exobiology a forgotten dream

lingers in the morning

then dissipates into routine

plenty of life forms to extinguish here

the daily rush to build, bank, close

always moving

towards a future already put to bed.

With all those arrays sitting pretty

dishy ears across the globe

desperate to find

what we instinctively suspect

but just can’t prove

the sound too faint

timeframes out of whack

communication hard at the best of times

it would be so fine to see your face at my door

without proof there’s nothing

but desire

flung across the universe via wormhole

a song of hope

and inexplicable loneliness.

The mediocrity principle

chemical scum, to be precise,
seems likely enough

sublime as we are

Yosemite snowstorm at dawn

Aurora over Antarctica

the number of possible habitable planets

grow daily

sifting hungrily through light curves

to find anything at all

even a whiff of bacteria

bug eyes and antenna shining

your tiny human heart racing

with fear and possibility.

Somewhere among 125 billion galaxies

in the observable universe

never mind the rest

the multiverses that line your pockets

full of zero sum extraterrestrials

visiting before we were ready

leaving their mark, and maybe even DNA

a thumbprint ancestor

you hope will find us,

youthful and charming,

smiling back, ready

to share.