Happy Birthday Mikolaj Kopernik

Happy Birthday Mikolaj Kopernik
19 February 1473


"To know that we know what we know,
and to know that we do not know what we do not know,
that is true knowledge."  ~ Nicolaus Copernicus  


Since your birth the earth has orbited the sun
five hundred thirty-seven times.  I am sorry
Mikolaj Kopernik, that I still cannot understand
the heliocentric calculations of the cosmos.
Arcseconds.  Stellar parallax motion.

But the real story here begins with dreams,
your dreams and mine.  In mine,
the Arcade burns again.  And again.  Night after night,
it sends up sparks smaller than pinpricks,
the smoke of penny postcards flying like pages
of an animated flip book.  An optical illusion
into the movement of celestial bodies.
Charred walls cave in upon the pinball machines.
The photo booth.  The autographed pictures
of fabulous Sally Rand and Clark Gable.  Nudes
and Midgets.  Bagatelles and Peep Shows.

I am five.  It is night and the Milky Way is hung
like an illustrated map.  Every blooming star is a marker.
An affirmation.  In this dream I stand and watch it burn,
holding my breath.  The child in me returns.  And returns.
Forever dreaming of these visible and invisible delights
and mysteries blazing upward in the sky.  A holocaust
with no survivors.  The earth, racing around the sun,
the fires of earth so like the fires of space.  A tapestry.
A brocade of soot and cinders.

If I could bring you back, I would. I would bring back
Sally Rand and Clark Gable.  Cain and Mable.
I would resurrect the Nudes and Midgets,
untie their ashes from Orion and Saggitarius.
Bring them back on blu-ray, believing in themselves

I was five.  They thought a child would not remember,
Mikolaj Kopernik.  Now that I am seventy-five
my dreams are filled.  Still.  With starscapes
outside of this world.  I remember.  I remember everything.
And it is not like anything I have ever seen before.