StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XII, No. XX

Saturday, 14 May 2011 21:00 Last Updated on Saturday, 14 May 2011 19:14

The StarPoet Newsletter
Vol. XII, No. XX (May 15, 2011 C.E.)

Correction of a poem's title: the last poem in last week's newsletter was erroneously titled "The Wife Abides." (Don't ask.) The correct title is "The Streets of Abbotabad" but you probably knew that already. I have no idea why the body of the poem appears to be in boldface. There appears to be a problem in the deep structure that no one actually sees.

Sun, trees, clouds and sky,
A day before us, a night to come
Filled with stars and moon
And warm embraces and the great delight
Of loving you

Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2011 C.E.

I tried to flag a ride Didn't nobody seem to know me babe everybody pass me by Standin at the crossroad babe risin sun goin down Robert Johnson, Cross Road Blues, Vocalion Records 1937
I am much Sappho as I am Whitman. Most times I consciously try to avoid sounding like either. My faux Shakespeare is seldom as good as Will's. Doesn't stop this week's poems from being good 'uns.

Let us star with some outright Starpoet.
Astrobiology 101
What a terrible waste of space If we are alone in the Universe, What profligate creator would design Stars and galaxies and then Not populate his many planets? Butterflies and sabertooths, Dinosaurs and humanity Evolved from single celled bacteria: If here, why not there? The Universe is a garden of Infinite opportunities, What god would restrict his mercy To a single minor planet in a Dollar a dozen solar system When an entire universe Is available to worship him? Habitable zones, carbon-based organics Can be found throughout creation; It seems unlikely that life wouldn't form And evolve quickly. Given time, given a stable sun And an otherwise habitable planet, Life will exist. We are here because the universe is here, Because the Milky Way is here, Because our Sun is here And this Earth was here to shelter us. There are a billion earths and more In this single universe we find ourselves. Great is the Cosmos Who creates and evolves us On Earth and the Many Worlds Until the end of Spacetime.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (May 2011)

We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. -- Tombstone epitaph of two amateur astronomers

personal declaration
C20H25N3O
I've never dropped a sugar cube, I've never done cocaine, I've never stole a car when young Or fucked a centerfielder. I'm not an astrophysist, And Indy driver, and Octo-Mom; My breasts are too small, My nose is too big, I never was a beauty queen; But I will be remembered Somewhere, sometime, A damn good poet for her age, Woman or not.
Lisa Jain Thompson (May 2011)

Starpoet continues with Biology 101
Bold Traveler
Microbes live below us, Two miles more and counting, Below our cities, below our monuments, Older than the race of Man. Microbes live below us, Without sunlight, cut off from air, Reproducing and moving below the surface For thirty to forty million years. Bold travelers who go Where no mammal can exist, In an alien world beyond expectations, Life survives beneath a deep earth ceiling Unimagined by Michelangelo. Wherever we may look, life struggles To become and continue, Beckons us ever starward in discovery, We set out upon a vast and endless sea Where many goodly creatures await to greet us.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (May 2011)

Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth. - Ptolemy,c.150 C. E.

random bits of living
A Thousand Furlongs of Sea
Mother and son killed as they lay in bed, A husband, a lover, perhaps a tornado, A force of nature seemingly unstoppable, Only vaguely predictable; we live and die By our biology and the whims of chance That structures our daily lives. A storm, an earth quake, a crazy with a knife, A bullet from the window of a book depository, We gamble to say no in the face of crazies And then we're gone to flowers every one of us, Blood, choice and equality.
Lisa Jain Thompson (May 2011)

God is infinite, so His universe must be too. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.	- Giordana Bruno, 1584 C. E., On the Infinite Universe and Worlds [Executed by the Inquisition]

the poet describes her backyard
The Rain in Spring
The world is soft and green outside, Wet, soggy, medium gray and well drizzled; The trees bend with a thunderstorm wind As lightning lingers just beyond the horizon. A female cardinal and wormed-filled robin Gaze forlornly from the back fence as the dog Refuses to do his thing, complaining that His owners have not provided him dry land. The sun refuses outright to participate As the rain waivers between deluge and sprinkle; The poet remains safely and warmly inside, Running reps in various descriptive meters.
Lisa Jain Thompson (May 2011)

the poet allows Sappho control
The Gentle Feet of Young Women
The gentle feet of girls and young women Circle spring's new lawn in joyous dance Their hair entwined in bright fragrant flower Guitars and young men on the bandstand If I were younger I would join them on the grass And contest the men for the fairest lover
-- Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2011 C.E. From a fragment by Sappho c. 650 B.C.E.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. -- Arthur C. Clarke's First Law But the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. -- Arthur C. Clarke's Second Law Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law

more weather
Rumbleness Abounds
A rumble somewhere above me, Duckpins in a distant lane, Passing over or just a beginning, A tornado watch in the area. A lull in the rain, a lull in the wind, If the temperature drops, I'm heading to ground, Should worse come to worse, the odds are with me, I hear nary a locomotive that ain't already scheduled On the the tracks out behind our yard.
Lisa Jain Thompson (May 2011)

Starpoet does the Cretaceous.
K Song
Have you ever seen a Cretaceous pre-dawn, Heard the roar and clatter of dinosaur song Greeting the rising sun? My ears hurt just thinking about it Even as my mind soars: T-Rex announcing they are up and running, Maiosaurae calling nest to nest While Triceratop bellow the herd to motion And Pterosaur push off to flight. I would give a decade of my life For a Wayback Machine, Then trade both of them For a working stardrive.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (May 2011)

One of the most impressive discoveries was the origin of the energy of the stars, that makes them continue to burn. One of the men who discovered this was out with his girl friend the night after he realized that nuclear reactions must be going on in the stars in order to make them shine. She said "Look at how pretty the stars shine!" He said, "Yes, and right now I am the only man in the world who knows why they shine." She merely laughed at him. She was not impressed with being out with the only man who, at that moment, knew why stars shine. Well, it is sad to be alone, but that is the way it is in this world. - Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures

comic relief or perhaps a deeply coded message
Scatterings
The moon shines bright in Albania tonight, The wind on the plain smells of buffalo, The rockets' red glare fades in the twilight, The ocean breeze snarls viciously through my hair. A tree in the forest is both dead and alive.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (May 2011)

thirty-five year old Starpoet song lyric
Earthlight Serenade
Have you ever seen the moon, my love, As she rose above the sea? Have you ever seen the waves around you As you lay upon the sea? And the tracks of the breeze, my love, Can you feel them in your hair? Look around across the sea, my love, Tell me what is there. Have you ever seen the earth, my love, As she hung above the sea? Have you ever seen the stars around her As she spun upon the sea? And the tracks of my tears, my love, Can you see them on my cheek? Look around across the sea, my love, Tell me what you see.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (May 2011) revised from a song lyric c. 1975
So far as I know, every such story has alien intelligences which treat humans as approximate equals, either as friends or foes. It is assumed that A-I will either be friends, anxious to communicate and trade, or enemies who will fight and kill, or possibly enslave, the human race. There is another and more humiliating possibility - alien intelligences so superior to us and so indifferent to us as to be almost unaware of us. They do not even covet the surface of the planet where we live - they live in the stratosphere. We do not know whether they evolved here or elsewhere - will never know. Our mightiest engineering formations they regard as coral formations, i.e., seldom noticed and considered of no importance. We aren't even nuisances to them. And they are no threat to us, except that their engineering might occasionally disturb our habitat, as the grading done for a highway disturbs gopher holes. Some few of them might study us casually - or might not. - Robert A. Heinlein, Grumbles from the Grave


Copyright © Lisa Jain Thompson 1948-2011. Back issues are in the Newsletter Section of the StarPoet website. Visit my contact page and get in touch.