©Sue Ann Bowling

The music of the spheres–
A trite phrase, and one with little meaning
Since universal gravitation replaced crystalline spheres
And first man
And then the sun
And then a point in the center of the galaxy
And then everywhere and nowhere became our center.
We drift, uncentered.

But here
The music of the sun, the moon
The deep rumblings of the moving plates of the earth
The colors of our world–now gold below, blue above–
Make up a different music of the spheres.
Monotonous at first.  The heart of earth
Beats slowly by the beating of our hearts.
But change does come, bacteria
Gave way to jellyfish,
And dinosaurs to man.

These notes change slowly, night to day,
Season to season, the cycles of the sun.
Here we are centered once again.

What’s this about? There is a room at the UAF museum in which the rhythms of the earth — seismic tremors, sun, stars, aurorae — are expressed as musical tones and colors on the wall. This poem was inspired by that room.