Love is in orbit,

a body being pulled
round the axes we laid –
and the further our foci
points were splayed,
the more eccentric
I became.

So you must be
the unholy sun,
the brilliant-star, hot burning one,
that put planet Love
in perihelion.

And in that nebulous place,
where I must be –
the place that Love
calls apogee –
I’'m sweeping out space
equally.

But Kepler well explained
the rapidly changing pace
that our planet Love
is wont to take,
so it never really was your law
or heart
to break.

06/20/2005

Author's Note: This poem is inspired by Kepler's laws of planetary motion.

They basically state that planets move in elliptical orbits. Ellipses have two special points inside them called focus points. What makes these foci special is that if you add up the distances from each focus point to any point on the ellipse, it's always a constant number!

In the case of a planet's orbit, the sun is at one focus point, and there's usually nothing at the other focus point (weird, huh?).

The farther apart an ellipse's foci are, the more "eccentric" the ellipse is said to be.

The point in an orbit where a planet is closest to the sun is called the perihelion, or, less specifically, the perigee.

The point in the orbit where the planet is farthest away from the sun is called the aphelion, or, less specifically, the apogee.

One of the coolest things about Kepler's laws is that, no matter where a planet is in its orbit, a line drawn from the sun to the planet will always sweep out the same area of the ellipse over a given time interval. This means that, the closer a planet is to the sun, the faster it's going, and, the farther away it is, the slower it's going!

The analogy here is of course that my ex is the bright shining sun, to whom love is the closest and moving the fastest for right now, and I'm the other focus point -- the place in the galaxy where love is now seemingly the farthest from...

But, like they say, or I guess like Kepler *first* said, "What goes around comes around."

Let's hope he was right!

Posted on 06/20/2005
Copyright © 2024 Daniel Peterson