A hand-drawn illustration of a manatee floating in space, wearing an astronaut's helmet with a red and blue lightning bolt over one eye like the iconic image of David Bowie on his Aladdin Sane album cover.
This imaginative poem opens with a playful image.  From there, we take a long
yet concise journey and land on something quite unexpected.  Enjoy!

In Space
In space
(the experiment
suggested by two fifth graders),
a Canadian astronaut
wrings water out of a towel.

It stays by the towel,
horizontal
transparent isinglass,
a hyaline column.

Then begins to cover his hands,
his wrists,
stays on them
until he passes it to another towel.

On earth
some who watch this
recognize the wrung, irrational soul.

How it does not leave
but stays close,
outside the cleaning twist-fate but close—

fear       desire       anger
joy       irritation
mourning

wet stuff
that is shining, that cannot go from us,
having nowhere other to fall.

 

By Jane Hirshfield, from The Beauty.
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only.

Image by Nicole Ray:  https://sloeginfizz.com/products/space-manatee-print