StarPoet Newsletter Vol. IX, No. LI

 

 

Happy New Year

 

 

 

 

New Year, New Year,
New Year, Novum Annum,
A clockwork calendar,
One after another.

 

The earth goes round,
Around and round,
And never comes out
Anytime anywhere.

 

The sun goes up,
The sun goes down,
But this special one
Somehow is new,

 

Not like any other day
That came before it,
Less new than those
That follow behind.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2008

 

 

 

 

Celebrate

 

 

 

 

Gather around the winter fire,
Fiddle, flute, and tin whistle,
Beat the bodhrán,
And sing the words slowly,
Recite the great tales
For all who are there,
Poet yourself and squeeze
The accordion,
Dance until the sun rises
Upon the new year.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2008

 

 

 

 

 

--Anita Milner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pain in the writing hand
Where the jeep dug flesh and bone out;
Somewhere beneath that once in scar,
Arthritis and tissue are playing with the nerve ends,
Tweaking the fibers with low grade irritation,
A Pocono battle ribbon for ice and snow
And the angular velocity of the human body
As it leaves an impacting jeep
Thirty three years before next month,
A generation ago it would seem
And only yesterday.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2008

 

 

 

 

 

some starpoet

 

 

 

 

 

On the grandest, most cosmic scale,
Einstein works,  the universe expands
At an ever-accelerating pace,
The signature of dark energy’s presence,
A measurement of its power
To change the dimensions of spacetime.

 

The universe sparked into existence
Thirteen point seven billion years ago,
Expanding slowly before ever accelerating
As dark energy took center stage:
The Milky Way and Andromeda
Will not merge with the Virgo cluster,
The local superclusters will disintegrate.
As dark energy permeates empty space
And light speed blinds us from all others,
Disappearing entire galaxies from our view.

 

Darkness, darkness everywhere,
A universe dominated by dark energy,
Not stars and planets and galaxies.
Matter  tells spacetime how to curve,
Spacetime tells matter how to move,
Dark Energy tells all to separate,
Be gone from this island universe.
Even nothing, even empty space,
Weighs something, pushing us apart,
Causing space itself to accelerate.
We proceed forever towards darkness.

Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unless you're a king.

 

 

 

 

 

 

day counting

 

 

 

 

The day before the day before,
A null-date,
An exquisitely forever day
For a child
Or when you are leaving
For an island vacation;

 

A too short day
If the guests arrive on Christmas Eve
Expecting your usual culinary expertise
And you are still hunting down
The right cut of meat
For the Bœuf Bourguignon.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2008.

 

 

 

 

 

 

the new year

 

 

 

 

The calendar plummets into the New Year,
Dragging us with it, willing or not,
Headlong into the great unknown.
Oh we’ll pretend that this time
Things will be different,
That this time the President
Will be wiser than the average door knob,
That this time, finally,
We have not made a collective mistake
And chosen the wrong candidate to lead us:
Past experience would suggest otherwise.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

 

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

 

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

 

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

 

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu'd the gowans fine;
But we've wandered mony a weary fit
Sin' auld lang syne.

 

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

 

We twa hae paidled i' the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roared
Sin' auld lang syne.

 

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

 

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught

For auld lang syne.

 

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

 

 

 

 

 

 

in remembrance

 

 

 

 

Watching bits and pieces of my life
Slip by me on the screen,
Actors and actresses I’ve known all my life,
Faces I must have seen a hundred times,
Now gone from me
Except in the films they’ve left behind,
Those moments who made me who I am,
Taught me how to live and how to die
And remember all those who have
Walked this path before me.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If Armstrong had not taken control,
Eagle would have crashed into Tranquility,
Just one more crater covered in the dust
Of ten thousand impacts on earth and moon.

 

The difference was the human eye
Guiding the human hand,
The human brain outperforming

The best computers and programming
That American science could provide;

 

But in the end, it took the flexibility
That only boots on the ground supplies,
The creative skill of a primate whose life

Balances on the decisions he will make

In those bright clear moments between
Between death and destiny.

 

Westward! To Mars, I say!

The naysayers and all those earth-firsters
Would have us denounce fire
As the first of many steps enroute
To The Patriarchy and the world’s destruction;
They would have us follow a path
That would stay us in the safety of our caves,
If not our nightly nests high in the savanna tree tops,
Rather than venture a single brave and curious soul
Upon the starry enterprise that awaits us.

The city folk can remain at home if they wish,
But the rest of us promise to write them
From Mars,  from Jupiter and the great sea beyond
The shallow boundary of sun and planets.
Westward!  Westward all! Our Adventure must continue
Or surely we shall die.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next time you encounter a nasty salesperson,
Be Katherine Hepburn.

-- Elizabeth Hilts

 

 

 

 

 

 

holidays

 

 

 

 

 

1.

 

 

On Christmas Day, Sharon and I
Gather ourselves for breakfast:
We eat, Cedar eats,
Slowly working our way
To the presents scattered around the tree

-- stopping first at the stockings
Hung from the staircase banister.

 

Remnants of Christmas Eve
With both my daughters
Are evident on tables and chairs.

 

We add to the rubble-order
Gift by gift,
Listening to holiday music
As we do so,
Continuing a happy string
Of Christmases with my darling.

 

 

 

2.

 

 

The presents are opened,
The tree is lit,
A Christmas Story
Plays in the background;

 

 

If the pagans
Had not celebrated Solstice,
If Christ had not died,
We would be watching the news
And wondering
If we should go out tonight,
Sing karaoke, drink beer,
And eat bad bar food

Instead of sitting side by side,
Arm in arm,
While Christmas dinner slowly cooks.

 

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

looking ahead

 

 

 

 

1.

 

 

Make me a coffin
Of dark rich war-wood
That I might be buoyed
Until the end of my days.

 

 

2.

 

 

A little distance from the forge,
I pause, past scorching,
My seams and dents hard smoothed
By time’s merry hammer.

 

 

3.

 

 

Casting my eyes aloft,
I search the heavens for direction;
Hard upon high midnight

The horizon floats nakedly
In unrelieved defiance.

 

 

4.

 

 

Kneeling beneath Orion,
Eying both Betelgeuse
And aging red Antares,

I sail on, playing the cards
I was thrust.

 

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2008