Fiona Cartwright

Ellen Harding Baker examines the solar system

She folds in my dimensions like a fan,
compresses me to a new density, handling
15 million degrees of heat at my heart. Once
                     I’m a manageable size
she picks me up,
                    runs Neptune’s ice between her fingers, strings
one of Saturn’s rings against her wedding band, 
ties my asteroid belt in place, 
                   bids me still my stars to observe them. Out
                                                                 beyond the Kuiper Belt                     
she writes her name 
in letters the span of Venus’ orbit. She stares
at her small self, 
          less than a pin-tip
on the silk dot of Earth, on that single 
          half-inch of fabric
where all life is squeezed together.

She’s shrunk me to a size
         she can smooth over a baby.
I warm the frozen moons of Jupiter 
        against her infant’s skin, 
wonder how she dares 
command me to make myself 
small, observable: wonder 
that I comply.

The 19th century astronomer Ellen Harding Baker made a quilt depicting the solar system as a teaching aid for her lectures

Fiona Cartwright is a poet and post-doctoral ecologist who lives near London. Her poems have previously appeared in various publications, including The Interpreter's House, Mslexia, Magma and Under the Radar. She was a runner-up in the Mslexia/Poetry Book Society pamphlet competition in 2018, winner of the Brian Dempsey Memorial single poem competition in 2019, and her first pamphlet, Whalelight, was published by Dempsey and Windle in 2019. She tweets @sciencegirl73.