Purim pending

Dim rag of moon hangs in the East-most pines,
to photobleach as soon as it's bright day.
The tidal tug of both great orbs aligns
to lay seas bare as waters ebb away.
Adar impends! An end to many things;
next year, we pray our masks are just for fun.
For now, we play at princesses, and kings
a final fling sends off the year that's done.
Four New Years mark each circuit as we're twirled
'though "this shall be the first of months for you".
A constant as our history's unfurled;
the calendar's ordained, if you're a Jew.
Brief pre-dawn glimpse of sky, before it's gone
ferments in poets' brains like scraps of song.

rosh hashanah

By equinox, Orion's high and bright
reminding us it's time to sharpen skis.
Free calendar republished night by night
for those mistrustful of technologies.
The StarLink constellation's something new;
Koheleth scowls, but nothing's to be done.
Illuminated just before dawn's due
Aloft, but plainly well beneath the sun.
Few city dwellers ever get to know
that Nature can't be bounded in a park.
Bedazzled by the artificial glow
they lose the wonderment of primal Dark.
A glimpse of sky sets poets' minds ablaze
as much at night as on the bluest days.

slipping away

Old moon's on point of getting overrun;
Her orbit's nothing like our spinning pace.
She's barely up when bleached out by the Sun;
We strain to glimpse her unillumined face.
A generation dazzled by bright lights
buys smart-phone apps to track elapsing days.
What had been patent any starry night,
now lies obscured in urban photo-haze.
Celestial clock displays both time, and date,
for those with opportunity to look.
Precise enough that one could navigate;
the heavens were sea-Captain's open book.
One's free to question if it's worth the cost
when so much had been gained, and so much lost.

rounding the mark

At perihelion, doomed to tip away
Our Northern hemisphere feels starved for light.
The Winter solstice ticks our shortest day;
It's drinking season on this longest night.
Spinoza's clockwork cosmos calls the dance;
elliptically, we're whirled from far to near.
No least detail is left to random chance;
each step's foretold within the solar sphere.
Beginning Winter as we round the mark
We flock to ski resort, or skating rink.
The party season peaks when all is dark;
we've learned it's bad to sit alone and drink.
It's complicated, living on this ball! 
For now, we bid good riddance to this Fall.

when and where II

The 'Longitude Act' dangled the Crown's gold

for anyone who'd find a ship at sea.
For such a story to be fully told
clocks must compete against astronomy.
John Harrison's chronometer came through
a challenge to the gazers at the stars
for whom the only time-piece that is true
must use the moons of Jupiter or Mars.
'Til patents let the Market Forces drive
Invention languished, waiting for a prize.
Scant profit to make innovators thrive
until the law let them monopolize.
The first Tech Revolution was set free
by innovations starting in IP.       

solar drive

Hans Bethe sketched a catalytic ring
by which four protons fused to noble gas
one carbon-neutral drive for everything
at the expense of what's no longer mass.
Two positrons--tout suite--obliterate.
So--net--it's only x-rays get set free.
Disorder somewhere's got to compensate;
those photons bear a ton of entropy.
A stellar system, while it lasts, perhaps.
But comes a day there's no more fuel to spend
no nuclei survive the big collapse
it's gravity triumphant in the end.
Her spouse may speculate, but can't know why
a physicist gapes slack-jawed at the sky.

the fault is not in our stars

Orion stalks us from the Southern skies
no quarry can escape his sword, and bow
laid bare beneath the huntsman's twinkling eyes,
where there's no figleaf, and no wisp of snow.
High season, when we ought to be on skis
our storms are pounding Florida, and Maine.
The drought that's beating Capetown to its knees
has San Franciscans praying for more rain.
The Winter snows and rains that used to fill
our reservoirs to bridge the Summer dearth,
now flood one state, but give another nil
as we disrupt the cycles of our Earth.
The stars can't sigh; they know this plot too well.
It's how such species make their worlds a Hell.

Yule

Past perihelion, flung back into space

Chileans watch their Summer sun recede

still snugly held in gravity's embrace

a dancer following Sol's stately lead.

Norteños watch days wax, and night-lengths wane

as New Year treads the beard of one grown old.

An axis canted from the solar plane

means days grow longer while our world's still cold.

Nativity got overlaid on Yule

as Saturnalia morphed to sing God's birth.

To face the dead of Winter sober's cruel

while pagans fete renewal of the Earth

As years concatenate another link,

we pass the darkest night with friends, and drink.

solstice

A endless dance of metronomic grace
a tipsy whirl around our common mass
cartoonish pair in gravity's embrace
Apollo barely sways his stately ass.
But Gaia's dancing harder, as the girl
to trace Ezekiel's celestial wheels
a spritely pas-de-deux for a whole world
like Ginger Rogers, backwards, and in heels.
An axis canted far from the upright
defying the consensus solar plane
consigns our drinking season to long night
where fantasies of trolls and goblins reign.
Each solstice, as we're running out of rope,
rebounding day-length gives us cause for hope.

M & A

When neutrons stars embrace, it's not by chance
their orbital decay was foreordained,
a single mass, where lately two had danced
but on the balance, much that's new is gained.
The warp and weft of space-time resonate
and LIGO duly notes this distant gong.
Once what was excess got to dissipate
the term for gravity proved far too strong.
Neutronium's its own potential-well
accounting for a lot of mass, perhaps.
But small amounts just blow themselves to Hell,
and bigger wads make BlackHoles, by collapse.
As wonders of the universe unfold,
it's kilonovae that bequeath us gold.

b'reishit N

FirstLight, created ere the moon, or sun
was stored away--for those who can--to find
each spark redeemed, a sacred battle won
perceived not with the eyes, but with the mind.
The written word made history's first mark
preserving poetry of those who'd died
sustaining what might gutter in the dark;
what had been deep could also, now, grow wide.
But is it metaphor? Or the BigBang?
black-body of a cosmos screaming hot?
A pre-galactic, thermal birthing pang.
Perhaps we'd better read it as p'shat.
FirstLight could cast no shadows in our cave
'til Wilson thought to look in microwave.

blue bubble

Convection roils our lower atmosphere
transporting solar energy away
if, at most frequencies the air is clear
not brown like Delhi, Beijing, or LA.
There, photons give it up far overhead
the upper air's no cooler than below
the column luminesces infrared
and what's been heated's got no place to go.
Still, all of it must stratify at night
for lack of insolation, gravity
like Maxwell's demon, sorts them out by height;
the atmosphere grows stable as a sea.
Another planet, orbiting its sun
might prove quite alien, when all is done.

signs and portents

Both young, and old, enraptured, scan the sky
Trump pauses twittering, no dogs dare bark
Carl Sagan's voice is heard, intoning why
when Fenris eats the Sun, the world falls dark.
Twice nineteen years since these three orbs aligned
presaging Khomeini's return to Qom.
this one sparks fantasies in Pence's mind
the omens point to Trump's impending doom.
Celestial clockwork's too arcane for most
who'd rather turn to clergy to explain
eclipses, or the meaning of a ghost
but never think to exercise their brain.
The wonders of the cosmos are unfurled
as shadows of the moon engulf our world

Auspices

Both young, and old, enraptured, scan the sky
Trump pauses twittering, no dogs dare bark
Carl Sagan's voice is heard, intoning why
when Fenris eats the Sun, the world falls dark.
Two score less two since we've seen such a sight
presaging Khomeini's return to Qom.
And now, we pray this micro-taste of night
elates Mike Pence, announcing Donald's doom.
Celestial clockwork's too arcane for most
who'd rather turn to clergy to explain
eclipses, or the meaning of a ghost
but never think to exercise their brain.
The wonders of the cosmos are unfurled
as shadow of the moon engulfs our world

giant mystery

Cassini showed us Saturn's atmosphere
convecting like to soar there should be fun
but only nine percent of what shines here
impinges there, so distant from the sun
the latent heat ammonia gas conceals
to form a cloud, and rain back towards the core
is barely half what water vapor feels
but there, when driven less, the storms rage more
ongoing gravitational collapse
could keep gas giants warmer than their peers
but I'd expect that's done in weeks, perhaps
and should be spent before four billion years.
The second-biggest planet in night's sky
has raging tempests. No one can say why

heavy

forever falling toward our lambent star
our tides alone acknowledge its vast pull
the lunar mass is not nearly as far
but heaps the oceans up when new, and full
the sum of sine curves, in and out of phase
one morning boats float less, one morning more
and seasides watch the come and go of waves
retreating and advancing on the shore
ten thousand generations didn't get
the simple law concealed in Nature's text
what Newton taught, what schoolboy could forget
the algorithm that makes forms complex
one inverse-square law, cosmic in its reach
keeps minds engaged while gazing at a beach

the fault's not in our stars

Orion watches skiers driving home
with Sirius forever at his heel
presiding over Winter's starry dome
as groomers tend tomorrow's playing field
while Scorpio's obscured behind the sun
he gazes on a world in black and white
as soon as the last chairlift makes its run
he's springing up to dominate the Night
come soaring season, he's a lot more coy
just barely getting up as first crow sings
a diff'rent heaven and a diff'rent joy
as mountains dwindle far beneath our wings
so many seem incurious to try
the pleasures of our playground in the sky

subjective time

each Summer flits past briefer than the last
as if we're whirling faster 'round the sun
but it's not heaven's clock that's running fast
our spring, with passing time, becomes unsprung
as mass is spent producing energy
our angular momentum wastes away
those photons pilfer our patrimony
the force-constant is lessened, day by day
and yet, subjectively, it's just not so
we slip leap-seconds in because we must
compared to languid days mere years ago
these latter decades leave us in the dust
entropic death by increments arrives
a cosmic metaphor for dwindling lives

solstice

at perihelion, clenched in Winter's grip
the sun--'though close--is impotent to warm
our axis of rotation has a tip
it doesn't meet the sun's plane at the norm
this solstice, photons graze our planet's face
where energy and matter get to meet
the solar flux skids mostly into space
without delivering a lot of heat
but pause to think of the Antarctic night
when we're admiring bodies at the beach
unbuffered by a sea, devoid of light
our orbit's at its unenlightened reach
this week, we pass the bottom of the trend
as calendars denote the Autumn's end

Ea

what's known's a glowing island in the night
around it, unillumined, laps the sea
enticing us to build a bridge of light
establishing what is, from fantasy
that second galaxy was huge to find
horizons fled away ten billion-fold
Ed Hubble blew the world's collective mind
our Earth's the same; what's bigger is the Cold
a gleaming pebble on the shore of Time
proud edifice of centuries of thought
the product of our faculty sublime
within the greater Whole is scarcely aught
the intellect gropes out in Time and Space
compulsively, like puppies love the chase