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.
Judy Kronenfeld is the author of three books and two chapbooks of poetry. Her third book of poetry, Shimmer, was published by WordTech Editions in January, 2012. Her most recent prior full collection is Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize, now available in a second edition from Antrim House (2012); her most recent chapbook is Ghost Nurseries (Finishing Line, 2005). Her poems, as well as the occasional short story, personal essay and review have appeared in many print and online journals (Calyx, Cimarron Review, The American Poetry Journal, Natural Bridge, Hiram Poetry Review, Poetry International, Spoon River Poetry Review, Women’s Review of Books, Pedestal) as well as in over a dozen anthologies including Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease (Kent State University Press, 2009), Love over 60: An Anthology of Women's Poems (Mayapple Press, 2010), and Before There Is Nowhere to Stand: Palestine/Israel: Poets Respond to the Struggle (Lost Horse Press, 2012). She is Lecturer Emerita, Dept. of Creative Writing, University of California, Riverside.
