When I was a child
I had a poster on my bedroom wall
of the planets of the solar system –
our local galactic neighbourhood
which consists of some rocky, some icy,
some gaseous, some barren, some hostile,
spheres, worlds of every kind,
of every size, of every colour,
of every temperature –
and that was what first introduced me
to celestial names like “Mercury”, “Mars”,
“Saturn”, “Jupiter”,
and the ring of all manner
of rock and ice that lies
and encircles us on the outer-fringes
of our backyard of space,
that is barely effected by the gravity
of the sun at the centre of our solar-system,
called “The Kuiper Belt”:
names that I had never heard before,
but which have since not left
the vocabulary of my imagination.

Space… the unknown…
the discovery of all
the wonders of the galaxy, the universe,
has always been a draw for me…
when I was a child I used to watch
fictional space adventures on television –
within the episodes of “Star Trek”
and in science-fiction movies
such as “Star Wars” –
that fueled my dreams
and compelled my mind
into thinking about the possibilities
that hopefully await humanity in the future,
what we will achieve,
and the reaches of interstellar space
that we will explore at some time
in the near to distant future.

There has always been something
about the sight of the stars,
when each and every
one us look above at the night-sky,
that resonates with something
inside of us – something profound
that speaks to something
within every strand of our human DNA,
our consciousness,
our heart, our soul –
and which captures us
and takes us away
with the gravity waves that
that drive the giant leaps
of art, science, humanity,
and every once in a while
secrets and truths seep into
the mind of someone who seeks
to know the meaning of life –
such as the answer to the question
of how/whether the universe began
and if it will one have an end –
and inspire people of all ages
to never stop searching, digging,
and uncovering the vast
multilayered, multifaceted,
multidimensional universe
of infinity that we are a part of:
the multicolored garden
of experimentation and evolution
that is everything that has ever been
and everything that will ever be.