I was delighted to receive this original poem written by Tessa Kale in an email this afternoon as a response to the posts and sermons about our human place in the Universe and our relationship to it and each other:

The Overview Effect

Their brightness was measured:
they must be rational, logical
not subject to raptures

certainly not visions. They must be
Blake’s naked Newton,
a fierce focus on calipers and their calculus. 

But the astronauts did look up.
The earthrise—
they were flooded with emotion

overwhelmed by the Earth’s beauty,
the burst of color—that luminous blue,
swirls of white

they were in raptures
even, if it hadn’t been
for the evident fragility,

against the vast and empty dark,
and earth so
perilously unique.

(Shared with permission.)

Thank you!