Galileo’s
first rendering of
Jupiter’s third-closest
moon is an analog video
snowball, a little grey pea, or
a bit of stratocumulus. You cannot
even see the crater punched into the
side, though it is there. In clearer images,
Amalthea is coned and rugged. From the
astrobleme, dust spills like an agricultural plenty;
pebble-nuts, stone-centered olives, and grits of
threshed grain orbit with the round-ringed-redness of
pomegranate seeds, wine grapes, and figs. It bleeds into
space. The pierced side of God bleeds more than this. More
than the clamor of wild quail, enough to cover the sun, several
thousand wings falling through the liminal spaces in the air,
sliding from a spear-shaped splice in the cosmos. Come morning,
they settle their feet on the crisp, milky, crystallized star-flakes
that have the suggestive taste of sweet amber. And now the birds have
quieted over the rocky desert. The sun is resurrecting over the great hills,
flushing them with honey. I cup my hands to drink it– the overflow in my palms,
swilling golden galaxy like a mirror or life-water. But still, I have only seen the
grainy film. I have
only tasted fuzzily the alcoholic rendering of the divine scapegoat, only
felt
goodness
briefly in
my hand,
the freshness of a cloud