I saw the picture
that Voyager II sent,
looking back
on our entire solar system,
on its escape into the unprecedented
of the unprecedented

- and looking hard
I managed, with guidance,
to make out a tiny dot,
no more than a speck of dust
that I intuitively wanted to brush off
the photograph

That is us
That is our Earth
and that is the truth

Just a sigh from a tired god
or the unruliness of a passing rock
would liberate a later photo
of that speck

Does this make ourselves more or less
significant?
To whom?
To ourselves?

It must mean something
that our generation
actually CAN see itself,
its circumstances,
its truth,
like this,
physically
on a photograph
by its scout Voyager
glancing back,
finding a speck of dust

We are vulnerable,
at the mercy,
granted the outrageous poetry
of this glance
at ourselves,
forcefully pulling us
out of our nearsightedness,
into our jubilant,
helpless
vulnerability

My ear sings to me,
it's Nantucket song,
and there is someone to hear it,
and that is me,
whoever that is