Immortal Thoughts

Dusk was the charcoal surface
on which the stars lay bare their
immortal thoughts,
an intelligence so consuming
none but the darkness
could reveal the blinding flame.
The constellations,
hieroglyphics,
sending their secrets into the eternal silence
of the ever-changing universe.
A shout into the void by a genius
beyond the atmosphere.
A message for the eyes of the omniscient
to translate and unravel
for those of broken minds.
An argument ascending
as to whether
the wings on which the vision came
could indeed be seen to fly,
for when a thing of erudition
does appear in northern skies,
it becomes the scorn of elders
on which time too heavily lies
and the overwhelming understanding
of what must reside beyond the knowledge
of the wisest of our kind
cannot be perceived by any
but the stars,
leaving,
in a circular motion,
the attempts of definition
for a circumstance never held
within the feeble grasp
of withering hands
and the hold of melting minds
and only those
who comprehend the disconnected thoughts
of what lies beyond
will uncover the true meaning
of the words the ancients never wrote
and trace back to the time of moonlit souls
and unknown knowledge
to decode these words to wisdom
and hear what lies behind
these written lines.

Breanna DeSimone is a senior at Mount St. Mary’s University. She has been published twice in the university’s annual literary magazine Lighted Corners. Her poems have also appeared in the online literary magazine Bourgeon. She hopes to one day own an old Victorian home with a window seat and she wants to travel the world.

Art can illuminate even the most elusive and difficult to comprehend ideas. Visual rules and tightly codified visual metaphors help scientists communicate complex ideas mostly amongst themselves, but they can also become barriers to new ideas and insights. Dr. Regina Valluzzi’s images are abstracted and diverged from the typical rules and symbols of scientific illustration and visualization; they provide an accessible window into the world of science for both scientists and non-scientists.