In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa by Ada Limón

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa

by Ada Limón

(published in The Best American Poetry 2024, edited by Mary Jo Salter and David Lehman, Scribner)

Arching under the night sky inky

with black expansiveness, we point

to the planets we know, we

pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,

we read the sky as if it is an unerring book

of the universe, expert and evident.

Still, there are mysteries below our sky:

the whale song, the songbird singing

its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

...