We're Not Worried

 

Danish astronomers have just discovered sugar

 

— simple molecules of glycolaldehyde — floating

in the gas around a young, sun-like star, four hundred

light years away. The molecules are falling

toward

a binary star, a system of two bodies,

one

primary, one companion, orbiting about

a common centre of mass. This space sugar, they think,

helps replicate DNA. We too orbit. Tonight

 

it’s ice cream at The Boathouse Tea Room, noticing where

the Speed River’s melting and, more urgently, the sides

of cones. We choose chocolate and vanilla, measure

the deviations. An old lady is feeding geese.

 

Astronauts wanted neapolitan for their trips

to the moon. Freeze-dried prototypes proved impractical.

Crumbs were dangerous to microgravity, like bird

 

parts in plane engines. Now they sell it at the NASA

gift shop, so we can all travel to outer space too.

 

There are more choices than stars. Scientists are making

breakthroughs in slowing down melt, though can’t make it healthy.

 

You can’t take sugar out because of the role it plays

The chemical structure girds against dismantlement