Editor’s note: Dr. Dave Swift, a contributor here at EcoPress, recently published a poem in the spring 2014 edition of “The Front Range Review,” the literary journal of Front Range Community College. We are very pleased to share his work here.

DISCOVERIES

Dusk –

A dark mesa to the East.

On it, poised, a single star,

Caught in the act of rising.

But the star is not rising –

           I know.

The Earth sinks against it.

If I can fix the star,

           the Earth must move.

And so, I watch

As star and mesa separate,

And feel

           the tilting

of the Earth,

And me clung to it,

Riding an electron

In the matter of the cosmos.                                                               

A discovery,

But not, in truth, my own.

Absent Copernicus

I could not have played this trick,

And replaced mere knowledge

With understanding …

Some time, in some place

He watched a star rise;

Saw what I saw and knew,

       for the first time,

What we have always known.

Did he tremble when he realized

What I realized,

But knew that he alone,

       on this earth,

Knew the truth?   

—Dave Swift