The Size of Greatness
When I was younger and dumber
only a boy in the 8th grade,
my science teacher told us, not to mess around thinking
how big the universe is.
He said it would make us crazy,
imagining beyond
The Milky Way.
Our 8th Grade science book asserted:
all of everything that was
had the same name as a candy bar,
one big bundle of stars.
The Universe beyond was black,
in 1962,
darkness only,
all the way.
Thinking on it,
refusing good advice,
I traveled in the darkness
on and on
until the fear
of falling on forever
brought me back.
Then I heard my science book was wrong,
and had been wrong since 1929.
All along the teachers knew
the Universe was bigger.
Hubble sucked his pipe in ’29
watching galaxies fly away.
Blue light
becoming red,
the distances
unimaginable.
The Crash of ’29
nothing to compare.
Galaxies
by the estimated billions,
a Universe expanding,
a Big Bang theory
gaining sway.
And so they knew.
And kept the science books the same for forty years,
The Milky Way
was all the truth they gave us.
Me and you, and all of us
were specks too small
to know:
the size of greatness here on Earth
was but a joke
to keep us buying candy bars.
Teachers taught us
to pull the plows of commerce,
pay the taxes due,
fight the wars they made for peace.
Eat your Milky Way, they said,
don’t contemplate the size of greatness,
disregard the light.
Don’t look up, you’ll lose your marbles.
Let the grindstone only
be your tragic view.
Immortal as we are,
the human life we live
is but a quest
to marry science
and the soul.
To live forever now
look up and loose yourself,
you’re just a speck of light.