Orbital telescopes send home images
nebulae, glowing with colour
last remnants of fat, dying, exploded stars
lingering across the night sky
lighted by millennia old catastrophe
They are where the magic happens
atoms forged in burnt out stars
a deathbed bequest that has made us all
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Considering the expanding universe and ultimate cooling, I pause
remembering photos of star birth amid nebulosity,
nuclear furnaces blossoming.
Telescopes in orbit or secluded in foreign deserts
produce pictures in lights we cannot see
show immensities in glorious un-colours.
In the back garden, I look up, past scudding clouds,
watch coloured pinpricks arrayed over black sky
with occasional satellites twinkling by beneath.
Feeling the breeze, green with trees, redolent with life
thinking of all those things we cannot see
here and all the way up there.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Unimaginably ancient, preserving moments in time;
billion year old pebbles from unknown floods
bones fallen into an ancient abyss
ten thousand year old footprints along an English estuary.
Sitting on a rock, you touch time.
Rocks move. They melt and set, erode to dust
and then the dust settles
forms new rock over time almost unimaginable.
This undulating plain formed at great depths
was thrust up to mountainous heights
now lies placid for your walking comfort.
Go find a rock
and travel in time and space.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
We are a brief bloom
On the fragile skin
Of a molten body
Encircling a massive furnace
We are a blossoming of sentience
With encrusted technologies
Craving wonder, hoping for company
Seeking knowledge and excitement
We truly are stardust
Our bodies built from atoms
Forged in successive stellar explosions
We crave the glories of the Universe
We are Human
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Re-blogged from last year
Richard Feynman was not only a brilliant physicist but one of the 20th Century’s great thinkers. He also loved playing pranks and thumbing his nose at authority. And, he wrote poetry!
There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison
Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.
Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the Sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar.
Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.
Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.
Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in…
View original post 19 more words
Equations straggle across the blackboards
dance and shimmer
spill understanding and enlightenment
making the strange world of quantum
less of a confusement
less of a set of contradictory statements.
Now you see it now you don’t.
Was Schrödinger’s cat truly there/not there?
The equations say Yes
as they are folded into Hilbert space
and all becomes obvious.
Even to our post party undergraduate brains.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
……remembering back to University………
I do like poems with an Astronomical bent, and here’s a wonderful one from Paul F. Lenzi:
“Solar Flare” by Dan Oliver
particle storms
shriek at inhuman
inaudible frequency
penetrate matter
lase holes through
the bones of minds
living and dead
mark acutely
the genomes of
all cosmic creatures
yet to be born
with the warning
that even the sun
is disposed to
explosions of rage
From my books Pieces of Wine and Legacies (vol.2)
Slender bones, delicately traced
staring grinning skulls.
No skin, no muscle,
no eyes, no heart or other parts.
Yet they tell a knowing eye many tales
of wounds healed, muscle strengths,
diseases and battles fought.
Indications of the life lived
and sometimes the death faced.
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Visitor from afar,
tracked by orbital telescopes
calculated trajectory indicating
an extra solar origin.
She is dropping past and zooming out.
Rock studded ice lump
possibly formed without a mother sun
in the darknesses between stars.
Interplanetary orphan,
we have only just spotted you.
Where are the others?
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
In honour of object A/2017 U1 , now visiting our solar system from who knows where.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/2017_U1
Tombs, forts and settlements
String the Ridgeway
As beads on a necklace
Testifying to ancient use
Above the spring line and refreshment
On a hot Summers day
The white chalk is hard walking
Reflecting sunlight back onto the traveller
When wet, millennia of churning feet and wheels
Have crafted a deep sucking cloying mudclay
Is it true that you continue on and under the sea?
A road so old that it predates the English Channel
Is humbling
Walking from the great stones of Avebury
Up through fields to the ridgeline
Following in the steps of so many
Stumbling in snow through ramparts
Thrown up three thousand years ago
Passing where the Smith of the Norse gods
Will shoe tethered horses
Looking down on the rolling plain
Or trudging deep within the occasional copse
Fires my imagination
Brings to mind stories, legends
Archaeological finds and study
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
