Thursday, December 28, 2017

Space haiku: afternoon constellation

Afternoon constellation
Data from space
Drowns in my teacup


Illustration by Dr Space Junk

















_____________________________________________________________________________

I was challenged to write a haiku about space on Twitter, by @spacejake_, - and no inspiration came. Some days later I was sitting in the 4th South Australian Space Forum, and a speaker mentioned the afternoon constellation of satellites. A couple of minutes later he said something about data from space, and the first two lines of this poem fell into my head.

Afternoon constellation made me think of afternoon tea, sitting at a kitchen table with a cup of tea and the afternoon light falling through the windows. I imagined satellite signals falling unperceived with them, the data lost in milky tea. Signals are no good unless you're listening for them, with the right instrument.

It's probably not a technical haiku, just short lines evoking that form, but close enough is good enough as far as I'm concerned.

I drew a picture to go with it because that's what I think my space poetry hero, @tychogirl, would have done.





No comments:

Post a Comment