–For Hasan Niyazi (1975-2013)
I promised you that I would write
a little book of poems for your stargazing.
Forgive me. To keep time
I was using the achingly slow clocks of stars
aware too late that I should have
written through the night and rushed the book
to your hands and let the stars
some being born some dying
look on while you read.
I can only hope the few words I wrote
unframed and wandering
conquered for you
some piece of the sky.
Not in the protocol
for you to photograph
anything familiar.
Your job was to be there
and record everything
and by everything
I mean
only the stuff
we don’t know.
Perhaps the protocol was vague
on this point
but
we have enough of home
for now,
thank you.
This little rebellion of yours
punched a crater
in the plan
that was scripted out for you
down to the minute.
I guess you didn’t hear
the pulse
of its demands
(not that it surprises me).
Next time, remember:
look back
at the full colors
of home
without
stopping.
—for Elsa
Lucky you
born branded
with the Big Dipper
on the immutable sky
of your cheek.
My whole life
I face the night sky
and beg it for
one arcsecond
of that beauty.
Poem in memory of the astronauts who perished in the Columbia (STS-107) disaster on February 1, 2003. This is a free verse poem I wrote on an old typewriter. I disassembled the poem fragments and stapled them tenuously back together.
Cut text from many different texts assembled for a poem. The background image is a 19th century map of Ptolemaic system.
Staring from the blacktop
at my daughter’s school
at the wrong
section of sky
until over the other
line of trees
an orange light
I didn’t expect
grabs me
and then I can’t
look anywhere else
startled by each flare
of separation
as pieces drop away
and come home
and what remains
drops the last of its hue
and keeps going.
“Bullet Through Apple,” by Harold Edgerton. Photo taken 1964 and printed 1984 by Gus Kayafas.
This very moment in front of the class
in front of the photo you took of an apple
exploded by a bullet in less time
than it takes to blink
I am thinking about the very moment
a bullet ricocheted up from a knot of wood
in our physics class
and pierced a ceiling tile
just a moment like your photo
too slick for the human eye
slicing awake the air
in front of the closed eyelids of the students
but in the very back row Donny
takes this moment because it is there
hidden between the frames
to hang his arm over the wood chair
and rest his hand on his girl’s thigh.
Asteroid Ida and its moon. Image credit: NASA/JPL.
I mine this asteroid
with the precision
of a grizzly bear
pawing at a tree.
I keep clawing
at the stability
until I break
the memory
in the force-chain
and trigger an avalanche
the pile easing
completely
the dust peeling off
into new
space.
Pluto’s moons. The moon Nix is named after the Greek goddess of the night. Image credit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (JHU/APL), A. Stern (SwRI) and the HST Pluto Companion Search Team.
In the last narrows
of the last cave
she
unattainable
slips into the shadows
no, is the shadows.
Can you discern her frame
from the other shades
of darkness
as you dive
the long slow dive
like a descending leaf
towards her?
Is she beautiful?
Is she shapely?
Is she beautiful
she who quivers
in the cold corners
wrapped in black sky
beaded sparsely with stars?
Is she beautiful
she who out of sheer
restlessness
begets Sleep
and finally
Death?
From “Old and New Astronomy” by Richard Anthony Proctor and Arthur Cowper Ranyard (1892).
What was your role
on that summer night
when the blanket
on the lawn
was drenched
to the last thread
in honeysuckle
and we looked up
at a full moon
and didn’t see you
so locked
in the moment
and staring away
from Earth
turning a blind eye
on a stolen kiss
the hidden chaperone
looking away
for us.
tychogirl 