Voyager spacecraft detects a constant ‘hum’ deep in the cosmos
headline, NBC News, May 11, 2021

I hear the hum Voyager hears 
as a choir of chimes, a thrum, 
a rising and falling quiet, ions 

close enough to sing to one another, 
too far apart to feel the fall
into each other’s orbits. I imagine

each, in unison, recites the same poem, 
chants the same auṃ, holds me, like a jewel
suspended among them.  If I compose

myself I can hear
that auṃ, or at least for a moment, 
I dimly grasp what believers mean

when they speak of god, when, 
beseeching, their eyes look skyward
or when they sway to prayer

in a language my ancestors knew–
or when grace showers upon them
like interstellar dust.