Ana's husband Matt has no problem agreeing that his wife, who traveled here from another planet, after all, knows a great deal more about perspective than he does. He readily understood Ana's instant liking for the poem "Distance and a Certain Light," by May Swenson.*
Consider: in the news these days (June 2013) is that one of our interplanetary probes is going to take a photo of Earth from Saturn this coming November. People who follow such things cannot wait to see how Earth, the "blue marble," might look from the rings of Saturn--it's a matter of perspective, isn't it? It will be a perspective we've never had before, like the famous photo the astronauts took of the Earth from the moon.
Ms. Swenson's poem goes beyond the obvious, however: junkyards, garbage barges, rubbish dumps, can all look lovely from the right altitude. In fact, the poem points out, many an ugly, decomposing thing can be charming, as under a microscope, for example. The poet does not mention it, but Ana well knows that even the planets and stars are not permanent: our bodies, in fact, are made from elements produced in stars, and very likely will end up going around again in some form or other. The people of Ana's planet celebrate this cycle. We can too!
See many more in the column on the right, under the LOVE sculpture-->
