Starry Night And the Astronauts
“When I paint space, I am with the astronauts,”
—Alma Thomas, visionary artist and painter, 1972
A Japanese billionaire books SpaceX’s starship for a flight
around the moon, artists as his crew, and I’m reminded
how years before painter Alma Thomas journeyed out there
herself. She was Artemis to NASA’s Apollo, correcting
their blind spot that limited spaceflights to white flyboys only.
Alma in her kitchen studio blasted off from her launchpad,
the red, orange and yellow stripes inspired by grainy live TV
broadcasts. The moon shimmering in her capsule window
as she listened to mix tapes of Ball of Confusion, Blue Danube.
When I think of Alma painting missions not how NASA might
sanction with kitschy art, but her abstract fields of indigo,
the cislunar distance, it’s her brilliant intensity, freedom.
Alma at the cluttered table laying out stars, wind tossing crepe
myrtle blossoms against the window as she walks beyond
the landing site, leaving boot prints on the dusty terrain.
Sunlight, galaxies elsewhere, reflecting off her golden visor.
Alma mapped a way for future, lucky DearMoon artists.
This expanse, an alternate perspective opening as the earth
receded in streaks akin to Van Gogh’s spiraling night,
floating above craters, marias, her stripes, the shadows
on this barren surface. Her latest canvases propped
against the wall of this sunny, make-do studio sharing space
with pots and pans, paint brushes. Alma in her command
module gazing upon the verdant backyard. These lights, colors,
new planets orbiting new horizons. Small, blue and green.
Alma tells everyone—stay on earth if you want. I’m long gone.
A Traveler’s Tale
“Little soul little stray
Little drifter”
—Hadrian (73-138 CE)
On my worst days I resort to re-watching Cosmos.
That old show puts things into perspective for an un-
science-y type who’s captivated by Carl Sagan’s rapture
in the 70s at twin probes launched boldly going forth.
What do I get from Cosmos? Um, that we’re composed
of star-stuff, stuck on this spiral arm of the Milky Way.
Turns out, I’m a paradoxical optimist, caught by Voyagers
plunging past Saturn’s starry clouds, volcanic Io, Titan’s
molten skies, methane blue Neptune, its golden disc,
its heart stocked with earth’s greatest hits. Our messages
in a bottle from this pale blue dot, these two nomads,
their tenacity, a future Carl hoped for, in the star fields I travel
lying amid the foxglove and wildflower, our obscurity,
in all this vastness, that starship, a fool’s errand from that
summer of New York blackouts, Son of Sam headlines,
KKK rallies in Georgia, Nazis marching in Skokie, Elvis dead—
that episode seemed to me, even then, a deliverance, a leap
from the inescapable earth, this optimism for our rovers
who’ll explore space long after they ceased speaking to us.
That Time Apollo’s Computer Memory Was Handwoven by Women
“NASA was well aware that the success of its flights depended
on the fine, accurate motions of these women’s fingers.”
—David Mindell, Digital Apollo
In matching blue smocks, the seamstresses pull the wires
through the loom’s eyelet hole, bit by bit assembling Apollo
guidance computers. It’s about getting the details right.
Metal trays, epoxy, pins, solder terminals. For eight weeks
sitting in pairs before each module, keeping to that rhythm.
These hair-netted experts create little old ladies memory,
finding kinship during lunchtime with the astronauts known
to visit and rally the troops, to thank them for circuits that
help steer the lunar lander, assure a safe splashdown home.
This labor doesn’t count as an innovation, or engineering,
but it takes skill to read the punch cards, pull the wires,
the fates taunt, weaving together, alert for errant stands,
for rogue codes might mar these rope memory cores built
on time, that work because a woman threads the needle.
James Gurley is the author of two chapbooks, Transformations and Radiant Measures, and the full-length poetry collection Human Cartography, which won the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize poetry and was published by Truman State University Press. His poetry has appeared most recently in Measure, Museum of Americana, Poet Lore and Redactions. He has received writing grants from various Washington state artist organizations and currently lives in Seattle.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESO/R. Hurt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
