enlightened

the vault of heaven makes a guy feel small
our planet's dwarfed by even local things
a rock that's scarce worth anything at all
when set against the scale of Saturn's rings
Polaris only tells us how we spin
and which horizon's blotting out our sun
but gives no hint of how one might begin
to understand how cosmos had begun
Fraunhofer lines put bar-codes on the stars
and--once you've compensated for red-shift--
you know not only what, but where they are
and needn't feel entirely adrift
sir Isaac Newton taught us to parse light
to peel away the mysteries of night