Phoenix IRAS 19115-2124

Poetry | Gabe Bogart

in a thumbnail, it looks like a digital sneeze

you have to do a lot of zooming in

when something takes 650 million

years to blink at you;

then you add a touch of x-ray processing;

  maybe infrared as well

and the full splendor of the Phoenix

comes into view.

a Vermilion Bird thinly veiled

in the yellow-white and steel-ice blue hues

that signify the epic clashings of

hydrogen and helium

over the span of countless epoch

attaining cyclical regeneration

through her own progeny.

three interacting galaxies, one star nursery

the third, Phoenix’s head

so particularly fecund

200 stars are born every year.

a mythical simurgh, as Persian astronomers

would call her, spreads her wings

from one primary remex to the other

the entire breadth of our own galaxy.

the relics of Bennu pulling back the curtain

long after the Ancient Egyptian cosmologists

stopped looking for proof.

and in the early 21st Century

in a future crawling towards a halt

and a jejune thud

I peruse pictures of IRAS 19115-2124

“The Bird” galaxy

convincing my imagination

that Jean Grey, Marvel Girl, Phoenix

(one name for each interacting galaxy)

is soaring around the universe;

an immortal flight

dancing in still life

from over here.