Diane Ackerman notes

WE ARE LISTENING
I.
As our metal eyes wake
to absolute night,
where whispers fly
from the beginning of time,
we cup our ears to the heavens.
We are listening
on the volcanic lips of Flagstaff
and in the fields beyond Boston
in a great array that blooms maybe talking about stars 
like coral from the desert floor, compares opposites like the night sky and stars 
on highwire webs patrolled
by computer spiders in Puerto Rico.
We are listening for a sound
beyond us, beyond sound,
searching for a lighthouse
in the breakwaters of our uncertainty, searching for something unseen or unknown
an electronic murmur
a bright, fragile I am.
Small as tree frogs
staking out one end
of an endless swamp,
we are listening
through the longest night
we imagine, which dawns
between the life and time of stars. the explosion of stars maybe 
II.
Our voice trembles
with its own electric, (maybe she is saying that our voices all sound different and have a unique sound)
we who mood like iguanas (mood swings based off of environment
we who breathe sleep (we sleep for a long time out of the day which is a large majority of our lives
for a third of our lives,
we who heat food ( she is probably against eating animals and thinks its dumb to feast on animals with manners)
to the steaminess of fresh prey,
then feast with such baroque
good manners it grows cold.
In mind gardens
and on real verandas
we are listening,
rapt among the Persian lilacs
and the crickets,
while radio telescopes
roll their heads, as if in anguish.
With our scurrying minds
and our lidless will
and our lank, floppy bodies
and our galloping yens
and our deep, cosmic loneliness
and our starboard hearts
where love careens,
we are listening,
the small bipeds
with the giant dreams.


1. what was your purpose in the creation of "we are listening" 
2. why did you decide to have two parts of the poem