Swan dive into cold:
last picture of the giant
as it subsumes you.
Paintings
Distant Cousins
Your stars are very distant cousins
the family fails to mention
each birth and death
a million oceans away
from family chatter
and not recorded for posterity.
It’ll Do
The camera comes in closer
to the lip of the dish
and calls attention
to the antenna
then dips down to show
the full depth
as the music swells
especially the low strings
we viewers are filled up
down to our toes
as if the dish were an ocean
we were seeing clear to the bottom of
glistening with fish
–the sparkling percussion tells us so–
we stare down but are somehow staring up, too
into more ocean
than we could ever imagine swimming in.
It’ll do.
It will be a clear day
It will be a clear day
when I leave the Earth
trouble capped at 10,000 ft
and birds below
will circle in
and repeat a sound
from a poem
I knew well
just out of hearing.
Hic sunt dracones
Comet 67P
“Zero g, and I feel fine.”
Intrepid
LIGO

Poem below by Stuart Atkinson (@mars_stu on Twitter). Painting by Christine Rueter AKA Tychogirl (acrylic, gesso, wire, canvas). This collaborative poem/art project has been simultaneously published at Stuart Atkinson’s blog: astropoetry.wordpress.com.