Eyes: Hubble & Corona
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched April 24, 1990
Thirty years later, the COVID-19 plague is raging
Orbiting above the earth
where time and space
are one
Hubble sees backwards
almost to the beginning
of everything
How did it reach
that perch
how did it acquire
sight did some
god with power
hurl it into space
No, it is what it is
through the lurch
of human genius
mortals set it in its place
gave it eyes
programmed its gaze
And who is this mortal
genius but a cosmic speck
upon a cosmic crumb
that swings in course
round a star that is itself
a marginal body in the sky
What does it mean
that a corpuscle
floating in a sea of galaxies
explores that world
and formulates its
history
and takes the measure of
its underlying laws
II.
Yet this mortal speck
harbors in itself
a cosmos rivaling the
world that Hubble sees
Our skin holds fast
the world of nano*
billions of creatures
who go about
their destined round
as surely as the galaxies
obey their orbits through
light years of emptiness
no intruders they’ve been
companions from days
of primal soup their eyes
as fixed as Hubble’s
on the cells
they’ll penetrate
The crown they wear
is not a friendly sign
they would depose us
their hosts
a microscopic
invader bids fair
to leave our world
a ruin
III.
Can the genius that
set Hubble in its orbit
grasp the more
challenging world within
The journey through that world
is the harder
more tangled
more uncertain
the stakes much higher
the very life of all
The mind is beggared
that nano* barely to be seen
outpuzzles
giga**
and lightyears***
And we who
are underway
cannot turn back
we hang in the balance
*nano=one billionth
**giga=one billion
Phil Hefner 5/6;2020
liftthescreen 
That’s beautiful and brilliant Phil