Galileo’s Middle Finger in the Museo Galileo, Florence

by Jeffrey Thomson

Galileo’s Middle Finger in the Museo Galileo, Florence
     “E pur si muove”

Under house arrest
in his villa golden
smoke of Florence
fencing him in
forced to read
seven penitential
psalms once a day
for three years
blessed are they
whose iniquities
are forgiven
he reads
he thinks
about tides
sloshing the seas
across the world
he thinks about comets
fleet globes of fire
how they move
he thinks about circles
that forever return
about his father
a lutenist long dead
who said that on a stretched
string the pitch varies
as the square root
of the tension
the pressure of his life taut
he is that string
he is certain
he knows
Bruno was hung
upside down naked
wreathed in smoke
in fire in the Campo de Fiori
he knows he has
escaped that fate
stopped moving
he will live his life
in this villa until his eyes
fail and his sleep
he keeps reading
his middle finger
tracing the path
of the words
the evening
spins around him
across a sky
frozen with stars