Applied Astronomy

Friends of ours had their first child – a daughter – on the 27th December. A few days later, while at Mt. Maunganui, I came across this poem by New Zealand poet Lauris Edmond. I thought it appropriate and glued it into the congratulatory card.

Applied Astronomy by Lauris Edmond

To answer the question posed by Mr Hoyle - was there one big bang or does creation endlessly continue – I need not peer among the midnight-shadowed stars; this tiny creature proves both theories tenable. Her beginning was the still moment In a moving tide, dark beyond all discovery; spinning atoms caught into a new grain of life; soundless explosion. Yet almost everything is still to come.

Black-haired scrap of frowning dim
absorption, your wide eyes wander still
in cloudy space beyond the earth, strange
shore on which you find yourself washed up
by storms whose source you cannot guess.

But your struggle has begun; from this hot and troubled little head the smell of crying comes; we are inordinately grateful when you smile. You are the surety we need that shocks of birth and death are big bangs only and in between, creations widening circles may carry us perhaps beyond the farthest stars. Small girl, dearly loved, you have picked up your life. I wish you strong and easy holding of it.