Tag Archives: science poetry

Drifts

August 12, 2017astronomy, cosmology, Ghosts, philosophy, poem, Poetry, Sceince Fiction Poetry, science poetry, SF, speculative poetryastronomy, drifts, Nebula, philosophy, poem, poetry, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Poetry, science poetry, SF, sky, speculative poetry, Technology, Telescope, WorldconThe Cheesesellers Wife

Nebulaic drift of space glows pregnant with stars
Pulsates with unseen radiation, reflects light upon broken hulls
Billowing gases thread through holes laced by stellar blasts
Huge gas pillars glow with the light from star birth

Strange shapes eclipse the details of nebulaic magnificence
Ships riddled by particle winds after a disaster deep in spacetime
Now drift in loose orbits within a mystery, artefacts lost to sentience and story
Deep in the cloud lies a graveyard drifting to gravity’s pale tune

Gas jets burst from infant stars, glow in unseen colours
Shoot forth ionized subatomic debris
Push against torn metal, shifting orbits, prompting collisions
Against desiccated limbs, simulating life once more

The beings who struggled and died here disassociate and powder to dust
Microbes drift and seed, await rebirth in planetary clouds
Amino acids alter with the alien input
Nucleotides drift forward to the future

Ghost DNA haunts the spaces between worlds
Drifts onto comet sand meteors
Drops into planetary atmospheres
Visits us tonight as it has done before

First published at In Between Hangovers

Some Science Fiction to celebrate that fact that I’m attending the Science Fiction Worldcon this weekend! 🙂

Terminator Line

June 24, 2017astronomy, Life, nature, poem, Poetry, Science, science poetrydawn, dusk, nature, science, science poetry, sun, Sunset, terminator line, twilightThe Cheesesellers Wife

It is always dawn and dusk
Time moves on geographically
The terminator line marches inexorably
Round and round the planet
Smoothed across the sparkling Pacific
Cut to shreds by jagged mountains
Rippled across desert dunes
Unnoticed in the mega-cities
Each second brings a thousand tiny awakenings
A thousand tiny refugees from sleep
A thousand predatory opportunities
A thousand closings

Previously published on In Between Hangovers

Corona

June 17, 2017poem, Poetry, Science, science poetryCorona, Eclipse, Life, light, science, science poetry, Solar Eclipse, sun, TotalityThe Cheesesellers Wife

Deep in the time of eclipse
As birds bed down and dusk creeps up
We see the Suns halo and crown
Reaching out to her children
Light in the darkness

Sunlight scatters from escaping electrons
Bounces off minute dust particles
While stripped atoms glow as crown jewels
Incandescently hot
Ethereal furnace

The act of seeing makes real
The fact of knowing sees beauty
The inner joyousness of the Universe
Lifts me
Up to the light

Desert sky

May 27, 2017astronomy, beauty, cosmology, Life, nature, poem, Poetry, Science, science poetryastronomy, Blogging, cosmology, Desert, Life, Milky Way, night, poem, poetry, science, science poetry, sky, space, Wadi RumThe Cheesesellers Wife

Driving in a roast red desert
Headlights staring into primeval dark
The untrammeled sky glorious

Above us a bridge of stars
Rivering between rocky horizons
At once near and so very far

Cricking my neck to see
I bounced around the back of the open jeep
Absorbing, amid the shudders, splendor

Star birth and death, worlds hidden by distance
Great glowing nebulae
Fat in the centre, a devouring black hole

Dunes

May 7, 2017Life, nature, poem, Poetry, Sciencebeach, dunes, ecosystem, Life, nature, poem, poetry, science, science poetry, sun, travelThe Cheesesellers Wife

Dunes

Rolling along the shore
Linear formation
Field of Dunes
Rounded and steep sloped
Not barren sand
But sheltering life
A sandy ecosystem
That
In turn
Holds down the drifting sand
Rolling along the shore

The little folk

May 3, 2017archeology, Ghosts, Life, poem, Poetry, Science, science poetryfairy, Homo naledi, Life, paleo, paleoanthropology, paleolithic, poem, poetry, prehistory, science, science poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

Folk tales of little people abound
Retreating to the deep Earth
Now and then to emerge and engage
Ensnare or enslave
With trickery or with passion

Peripatetic you may have been
Leaving small trace of your lives
But deep in an African cave
We have found you
Naledi, little stars

We term the women who reclaimed you to the light
Underground astronauts
Yet you carried your beloved dead here
Through narrow clefts, over parlous depths
To lay them tenderly down to rest

As we stare into our deep past
And find you, Homo naledi
Those of us who wonder
Those of us who marvel
Are ensnared and enamoured

The discovery of fossils of a new human species (Homo Naledi) is, in itself, a fascinating story. But why they are so ‘cool’ is very well explained by our fellow blogger on Fossil History at https://fossilhistory.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/homo-naledi-why-these-fossils-are-so-friggen-cool/

National Geographic describes them as “A fully modern hand sported wackily curved fingers, fit for a creature climbing trees. The shoulders were apish too, and the widely flaring blades of the pelvis were as primitive as Lucy’s—but the bottom of the same pelvis looked like a modern human’s. The leg bones started out shaped like an australopithecine’s but gathered modernity as they descended toward the ground. The feet were virtually indistinguishable from our own.”

The “underground astronauts” (left to right): Becca Peixotto, Alia Gurtov, Elen Feuerriegel, Marina Elliott, K. Lindsay (Eaves) Hunter and Hannah Morris.