Gloaming

Last pictures:
our hero enters
the gloaming.

#NaPoWriMo, Day 23. (Cassini raw image, Sept. 14, 2017.)

Verso and recto

Old notebook:
from the smudged Saturn
a new planet.

#NaPoWriMo, Day 9

Plunge

Swan dive into cold:
last picture of the giant
as it subsumes you.

The Bringer of Old Age

The street astronomer’s telescope
points out over the harbor
at a dot of light
no one noticed.

He’s offering a view
–donations accepted–
of the one still thing
in this night.

I’ll have a look
though I already know what I’ll see.

I’ll only get so many views

so I wait my turn

as boats click against docks
and young adults stream out of the bars

and sneak one more brief peek.

Imagine the view

Imagine the view
first time the sub surfaces:
I call periscope.

“gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone”

 

“Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,

Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone”

–From John Keats, “Hyperion” 

Crescent Tethys beneath Saturn’s rings