Kepler's Telescope Finds Five New Exoplanets by Andrea Wyatt

Space backdrop 2 by Futurilla

Imagine a huge thermometer,

we are pretty close to the bottom
not as low as
Jupiter or Neptune
bluest of the blue,

but a little higher, between

water freezes and water boils
closer to freezes,

on that imaginary glass device
with Fahrenheit on one side

going up the thermometer past lead melts

we come to mercury and venus
out of the corner of our eye

like Diana of the hunt
see Serena’s big sister
stalk Clijsters

then nothing
until the thermometer registers

molten lava and gold melts,
and there they are,

 five exoplanets
 hotter than molten lava,

 glowing,

 orbiting their stars
 three to five days,

one of them amazingly
light like Styrofoam.

*****

Andrea Wyatt’s is coeditor of Selected Poems by Larry Eigner (Oyez Press), Collected Poems by Max Douglas (White Dot Press), and The Brooklyn Reader (Random House/Harmony). Her work appears in numerous periodicals and anthologies, most recently The Absence of Something Specified. Wyatt works in Washington, DC for the National Park Service.