Day Five . . . five shalt thou count; neither shall thou cease counting at four, nor shall thou proceed on to six, at least not till the morrow, until the cock shall once more crow to the heavens.
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: "write a poem . . . about a slice of the natural world that you have personally experienced and optimally, one that you have experienced often. Try to incorporate specific details while also stating why you find the chosen place or plant/animal meaningful."
Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: "pick an element (like from the periodic table), make it the title of your poem (or part of the title), and then, write the poem. Anything goes from hydrogen to oganesson."
I imagine Maureen envisioned autobiographical poems arising from her natural-world prompt, but Robert's element prompt pushed me in a science-fiction direction, to a speaker whose personal experience with the natural, a wide-ranging experience, is out of this world.
Eaters of Hydrogen
I’ve been a solar astronomer since 1995
so I’ve been around the sun a lot. Really,
we’ve all been around the sun many times,
as many as the years you’ve been on Earth.
Depending on how many orbits that is for you,
you might think you’ve seen everything under
the sun, as they say. Or in my case, on or near
the sun. Well, today, I saw something so crazy
no one’s ever witnessed anything like it before.
Have you seen pelicans fishing? They swoop
down and scoop up a beakful of ocean,
netting a fish or some other sea creature.
Today, the instruments and also the big scope
caught something humongous at the edge
of the sun's photosphere, where nothing has any
business being. A colossal, gigantic structure,
10 times bigger than Jupiter, on the order
of 700,000 km . . . about 100 Earths lined up!
“Structure” is a misleading word, because
this thing was flexible, like an eel or snake.
It was longer than your typical prominence
on the sun’s surface, and it was swimming!
Unaffected by the sun’s gravity. Or heat.
It had to have originated out in deep space.
We’ve never seen anything like it. You know
the pelicans I mentioned before? The front end
of this monster had a mouth like a pelican,
with a maw as big as 10 earths. And it was
dipping its jaw into the sun and out again.
All we can figure out is that it must be
feeding, consuming the sun’s hydrogen.
It’s like a gargantuan sea serpent or dragon.
A leviathan as long as the radius of the sun.
A real Bakunawa eating more than the moon.
What do we do if this behemoth turns toward Earth?
And are there more star-eaters out there, hunting?
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
The Bakunawa is a Philippine dragon that, according to myth, eats the moon so that people must bang pots together and make lots of noise to scare the Bakunawa into regurgitating the moon. A myth that arose probably to explain lunar eclipses.
Alan's poem today also mines both prompts, his natural setting described with meticulous verve and detail, with the scent of brimstone always hanging over the scene, if only in fancy.
P O E M R E M O V E D
while being submitted for publication.
Please come back later. The poem may
return at some time in the future.
Thank you!
|
Amazing poem, Alan. Wonderful, especially in that unexplainable and yet-so-true gesture at the end.
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word “comments” in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks!
Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment