An ill-matched stellar couple wobbling through

The heavens---a white dwarf and blue giant

In limping dance that lasted years to who

Knows how many million more?  Thus bent

By gravitation to an awkward swirl

Around their wide celestial ballroom,

Two stars contend,  and make the dance a duel:

Each mass in challenge with no sure outcome.

Both of them are massive certainly:  great

Sirius,  blue giant,  so hot and young,

So prodigal in radiance,  its rate

Of hydrogen consumption appalling,

Producing helium prodigiously.

The other star once like the sun;  but then

Collapsed into a compact dwarf,  its core

A confined sphere of carbon atoms in

A state so highly dense a mere spoonful

Of it would outweigh an ocean liner---

Possessed of a fierce differential pull.

Hence the wobbling dance,  the tidal tug of war

That neither star may win.  The dwarf proceeds

To orbit Sirius while plucking up

A ridge of star-stuff chasing where it leads,

Attracted inexorably to leap

Toward the dwarf---defeated by the force

Which drags it down again:  the gravity

Of giant Sirius,  that also holds

The dwarf in thrall to orbit endlessly. . .

And thus the dance and duel go on:  we view

It forty eight million million

Miles away,  eight years in the past.  Though quite

Serene and cool and silent seems the blue

Giant Sirius hung in winter night.

Stanley

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