ASTRONOMY FOR KENYON

it is all well to study the relative motions of heavenly bodies, to learn some of their names, learn some of the history we have deduced from observation of how the cosmos has come to manifest itself in ways we can see and appreciate today, and i can help you do that. but to me the most important thing to learn from studying astronomy is the vast scale and incredible inhospitableness of the powerful forces arrayed in the universe against any notion of life, forces which are embedded in an equally inhospitable void of unimaginable dimensions, contrasted with the incredibly small habitable dots of safety for life, like the one we call earth; and worse, the wilful sacrifice of parts of this tiny arena of safety in a hostile cosmos by some humans who are engaged in making portions of it equally inhospitable to life by their own greed, ignorance and vicious disregard of others that they somehow perceive to be, even if only slightly, different and less important than themselves. 

if you can hold somehow in your head a map of the scale and size and overwhelming power of things in the cosmos, both (largely) empty space and the deadly convulsive radioactive clots of matter it contains, and never forget how vanishingly brief the role of living things is or how vanishingly small the percentage of the whole cosmos is that is safe for life to inhabit, maybe you will help find better ways for us here on earth to relate to our home and the others we share it with who, seen from any distance, are exactly the same as us.
h

OUT IN THE SUN

out in the sun
melting the frost
the grasshopper
is moving slow

THESE SHOES ARE MINE

these shoes are mine
these boots are mine
this cabin
these thoughts.
there is a simple world
before and beyond 
the great world of woe.

ENDS AND MEANS

the old end justifies the means argument rests on the assumption that neither one is fictional.  in reality the means are everpresent and ruefully if not brutally real while the ends never arrive, but are always just one more action away, retreating apace as the troops advance, like the mirage they are.