Thursday, July 15, 2010

HUBBLE THURSDAY 15 JULY 2010

(Tiny motions of several hundred young stars within the central cluster of the star-forming region NGC 3603)

Every Thursday, I post a very large photograph of some corner of space captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and available online from the picture album at HubbleSite, followed by poetry after the jump.


OWLS

by W.D. Snodgrass

— for Camille

Wait; the great horned owls
Calling from the wood's edge; listen.
There: the dark male, low
And booming, tremoring the whole valley.
There: the female, resolving, answering
High and clear, restoring silence.
The chilly woods draw in
Their breath, slow, waiting, and now both
Sound out together, close to harmony.

These are the year's worst nights.
Ice glazed on the top boughs,
Old snow deep on the ground,
Snow in the red-tailed hawks'
Nests they take for their own.
Nothing crosses the crusted ground.
No squirrels, no rabbits, the mice gone,
No crow has young yet they can steal.
These nights the iron air clangs
Like the gates of a cell block, blank
And black as the inside of your chest.

Now, the great owls take
The air, the male's calls take
Depth on and resonance, they take
A rough nest, take their mate
And, opening out long wings, take
Flight, unguided and apart, to caliper
The blind synapse their voices cross
Over the dead white fields,
The dead black woods, where they take
Soundings on nothing fast, take
Soundings on each other, each alone.

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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP 13 JULY 2010

Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there. And the first one on this page is from little gator.




















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Sunday, July 11, 2010

NEW POEM: ASHES, ASHES

ASHES, ASHES

In those days I would wake during sleep's wheelturn
covered in darkness, with only your breathing near
as calendar and map. I fit myself along your back
tuck my insteps into your soles, splay my hand
over your belly, and match the rhythm of your in and out.
I want you to wake up and want me. My fingers
remember your rills, I promise to make up for lost dreams
I mean to go on with you, I will never tire of you
I will be proud to claim you among new people
I will find you funny without condescension, I will kiss you
at least once each day with full presence, I will keep you
as the other which defines me. I mean it to be you.

But I am a medieval troubadour with secret bubos
who does not sicken myself, yet leaves behind
weeping villages and songs no one wants to learn.


copyright Maggie Jochild, 10:48 a.m., 11 July 2010

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