The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Judy Kronenfeld

Early Astronomy

My granddaughter tells me with the charm

and certainty of her five years that Jupiter

"is the ice cream planet. If you stepped on

it, you would sink," she recites, passing on

the disarming metaphor of her "other"

grandma. Her eyes go dreamy when she

envisions Saturn's rings. (My turn: "snow-cone" texture!) 

"Whoa!" she says when we read that Betelgeuse

could hold a billion of our suns. Undwarfed

by spaces where no human race is,

silences where matter barely whispers,

giggling at the name and unafraid, she's on a ride

like the Flying Unicorn, and just thrilled

with these new proofs the world was made for delight.