Light-possessed atmosphere

Last evening I mentioned the Jodrell Bank Observatory – home to star-gazing telescopes, and the International Space Station – temporary home to some of the world’s highest and best trained scientists and explorers. Tonight I’m thinking of a favourite American poet and journal keeper, herself a kind of human observatory whose powers of empathy, invocation, perception and reflection have me returning “into, out of, under” her works over and over again. Here’s May Sarton’s

Invocation

Come out of the dark earth
Here where the minerals
Glow in their stone cells
Deeper than seed or birth.

Come under the strong wave
Here where the tug goes
As the tide turns and flow
Below that architrave.

Come into the pure air
Above all heaviness
Of storm and cloud to this
Light-possessed atmosphere.

Come into, out of, under
The earth, the wave, the air.
Love, touch us everywhere
With primeval candor.

May Sarton
Collected Poems: 1930-1993, page 364