Two Cats, Two Dogs, a Bird, the Sun

Chris Ellery

May 3, 2026

Inside an egg in Il Museo Galileo 

in the city of Dante and Beatrice and Leonardo 

and Michelangelo, a middle finger of the astronomer 

ambiguously points heavenward.

Feel the scientist’s presence here at my son’s house 

in the city called The Yellow Rose of Texas,

“Bomb City,” 

city of nukes and helium. 

Earth is un-tilting toward its renaissance, 

near perpendicular in its revolution, vernal equality 

of day and night. And in this season of regreening, 

what Galilei could bear to think of leaving?

Two cats and two dogs stare out the storm door, 

devotees rapt in the shimmer of atomic power, 

all silent on their haunches and as still 

as statues of Anubis.

Far from the mortuary bitterness of pyramid blackness, 

an awakening redbud lives in sunny brightness,

its shadow imperceptibly advancing on the grass, 

sundial evidence of heliocentric rightness. 

Beneath our nearest star, pansies contemplate 

the mud. The live oaks drop their leaves. 

Plum and pear begin to bloom. A cardinal 

blazes in the beams, calling to his nesting mate. 

In his cheery song, a young madonna passes, 

pushing a stroller, her stardust baby just beginning 

to comprehend the Empyrean vastness 

and the rhythm of the turning. 

Indifferent to all this flow, the geocentric 

pope or king would blast design 

and torture every satellite to keep all things

within the self-sustaining gravity of status quo.

And most of us would bend to power, I suppose, 

pretend to faith in any nonsense, give fact the bird

for one more orbit, one more year of chiaroscuro—

nay, but one more hour! After all, the sunshine falls 

with equal glory on the graves of hero and heretic 

martyr and liar. Truth doesn’t need our witness 

or permission. The same stars dance forever in bliss 

in the perfect eyes of Beatrice.

Chris Ellery is the author of six poetry collections, including The Big Mosque of Mercy, based on his residence in Syria and travels in the Middle East. He is the recipient of the X.J. Kennedy Award for Creative Nonfiction and the Texas Poetry Prize. 

Propaganda masquerading as “truthiness” is a staple of political discourse, but the current U.S. president and his cohorts have amped up their attacks on the facts and those who reveal them to a level generally seen only in police states. As far as I know, people haven’t been spirited away and executed in the middle of the night, but certainly the DoJ and DHS have been weaponized to discourage free speech that offends Donald Trump.

Primarily through the allusion to Galileo Galilei, my poem uses the Historical Topographical Pattern to expose and ridicule those who suppress truth, and secondarily those who deny or conceal the truth they know because they fear the consequences if they don't. The poem also attacks the military-industrial complex and our culture of both personal and institutional violence.