Day 26 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2019

Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that uses repetition. You can repeat a word, or phrase. You can even repeat an image, perhaps slightly changing or enlarging it from stanza to stanza, to alter its meaning. There are (perhaps paradoxically) infinite possibilities in repetition.” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “For today’s prompt, write an evening poem. A poem about or during the night. Or take evening a completely different direction and think of evening the score or making things more even (or fair or whatever).” One evening last fall, I went out in an open green space on the university grounds to see four of the five visible planets strung across the night sky. (The missing planet was Mercury, which is frankly pretty hard to spot, in general, but at this time, it was elsewhere in the sky.) For Maureen’s repetitions, I imaged the planets all as jewels. Originally, I had four “dots” but that seemed pretty boring. Incidentally, while I was out there planet-gazing, two university cop cars stopped to see what this guy was doing out there. I was really excited to be able to share with some other folks this amazing sight — “There's Venus over there, and up here are Jupiter and Saturn, and just rising now, we’ve got Mars.” They were polite — “uh-huh, uh-huh” — and probably decided ultimately I was harmless. Okay, here we go — a Shakespearean sonnet, with some slant rhymes. I close with an alexandrine couplet (six beats per line rather than five) as a closing gesture, a sense of an ending. Four Gemstones in the Heavens As the evening came on last October, cold enough but not yet the frigid wilderness last winter became, I stood out in a field where I could see the purpling sky over trees changing green to black. To the west, the sun had dipped below the horizon, but its halo still glowed red, and just above there hung Venus, a bright blue gem, not far from a yellow jewel that was Saturn. I wished I had a scope so I could see its rings, like I did in college astronomy classes. Almost centered at the top, another sharp blue gem was Jupiter, so large a thousand Earths could fit inside it. Then rose the red jewel, Mars, to complete the resplendent necklace of night. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Actually, just as a point of clarification, a lot more than a thousand Earths could fit inside Jupiter . . . more than 1,300. It is almost 12 times as wide as the Earth. And Jupiter alone weighs 2 1/2 times as much as all the other planets put together! Okay, so I’m an astronomy geek. 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

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