THE EYE OF GOD

Our minds abound in little things
We of planet earth.
We send our soaring crystal eyes
Out past our earth's horizon.

These little eyes, so fragile, fine
Return to us sublimity.
The sun we worshipped in the past
Is fire heat and power well beyond our ken.

Out Tycho way, a supernova past
Dying remains of magnificence
A ball of chaos formed with gas
Blue and green, the fires of hell.

Centaurus tells of berserk power
Eruptions from past million years
A black hole of hell in centrefold.
Two arcs of gas that form new stars.

Our little minds have named
In Eagle Nebula, The Pillars of Creation
Gas and dust and forming stars
Pillars fading to renew as all conception.

Quasars in Virgo, quarks and rings,
Light years and deep fields
Starbursts and cartwheel galaxies
Beauty never-ending and irreverent.

Our little minds, our smaller hearts
Dare to name the cosmos
Shrinking the vast un-understandable
To where we can safely see.

What we see is not what is,
Our eyes and minds too small
To understand transcendence
Mightier than we will ever be.

Yet our arrogance knows no bounds
For we have dared to name
A dying Helix Nebula
The Eye of God

I ask, which God?

Dawn McDonald
© December 2003

Graphic: "The Eye of God"
(Helix Nebula-NASA)