Hi Charlotte,

Nice to see you at D &A!
Titles definitely don't EVER get used in The Oldie comp.

Jayne

Thanks, Roger. I like your suggestion for that last phrase. I'll put it in.

I also made a tiny tweak in lines 5 & 6: "his pains / with doors and clothing" (instead of "the pains / of doors and clothing"). I think that sounds more idiomatic. Thanks again, Roger.

An Altered Boy (Old School)
 

An Altered Boy (Old School)

He carefully studies pretties, ignores the plains,
and searches for Maria every day;
pure thoughts of her can take his breath away.
From stolen sips, red altar wine now stains
his surplice, though today he’s taken pains
to look his best. It’s Virgin’s Day in May,
and spirits urge the altar boy to play.
He’s served this mass all week, despite the rains,
and vows, I‘ll make her smile before she leaves!
He holds a paten, gold like rising suns,
below each chin as Father feeds the sheaves
of high-school girls a host. With bated breath,
he strokes the paten; she winks: his mind now runs
to sins he’d sin with her until his death.

Cheers Martin, I'm glad this challenge has resulted in various astronomical, science-fictional and zoological entries, as well as others - great variety from one set of bouts-rimes - and not a few of them from you!
Mercury was long thought to have an identical orbital period and rotational period (i.e. contrasting light and dark sides), but in 1965 was realised instead to rotate in 59 days (2/3 its 88-day 'year'). So all parts of it receive pretty intense heating, at intervals, but in an odd pattern due to its quite eccentric orbit... except the poles, at which it seems there may even be ice in permanently-shaded areas (there are such, since its axial tilt is negligible). A curious combination of circumstances!
I'm glad my poem and its viewpoint pleased you. As you saw, I was envisaging ore-prospecting initially by unmanned probe, given Mercury's abundant solar energy and (possibly) thereby accessible mineral 'hard wealth' - arguably commercially-appealing, though otherwise forbidding as a destination for colonisation.

Collect
 

Some dig scattered bones from ancient plains,
While some seek sporting honours on a day
When their team plays - at home, or else away.
Scrutinising minute marks and stains,
Some gain forensic data for their pains:
They gather truth; bring folk to justice. May
Collecting be Man’s favoured mode of play?
Some count the rings of trees - which measured rains;
Pen haunting memory, which never leaves;
Hoard coins like silver moons and golden suns,
Or haul home herbage, gathering-in sheaves;
Some meditate, marshalling thoughts in breath.
Lifelong this, our collecting habit, runs…
Until our own in-gathering, by death.

Hi Graham,

Thanks for explaining your ideas and the theme of your Mercury poem. I knew about its day being 2/3 of its year. And I just did a bit of research and found this helpful Wikipedia article about the colonization of Mercury, which you might well have seen:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mercury

As in your poem, the article mentions Mercury's valuable resources, such as (possibly) helium-3 — "an important source of clean nuclear fusion energy on Earth and a driver for the future economy of the Solar System," as well as "a crust rich in iron and magnesium silicates, with the highest concentrations of many valuable minerals of any surface in the Solar System, in highly concentrated ores."

After reading that poem again, I like it even more.

And your new, rather philosophical one ("Collect"), is excellent too. I like the chiasmus of "gathering-in" / "in-gathering." It's an interesting catalog of things people collect. The last two lines are inspired.

Question: Is the purpose of meditation to marshall thoughts or to clear one's mind of them?

A Tornado Chaser

I chase tornados all around the Plains
like a knight-errant looking every day
for fresh adventures. Just can’t stay away.
She’d say that a devoted spouse abstains
from risky trips. I’d tell her I take pains
not to crash my jeep, yet her dismay
hung like a storm cloud when I went to play
and photograph Earth’s mightiest winds and rains.

It’s true folks sometimes lift and whirl like leaves;
yet funnel-hunting’s fun. A thousand suns
are not as grand as watching barley sheaves
rise from a ranch and vanish in a breath.
I think now, as I race one, how she runs
with Ian — safe, monotonous — toward death.

Jayne: thanks for the info. And I'm happy to be here!

Martin: this one's really good. Quite moving--and chilling!

"Would" sounds slightly awkward to me in line 7, since you've just used the contraction, "she'd" in the preceding line.

I also wonder about "all" in the first line, as slight filler.

But honestly, I'm being really picky. And that ending is a killer--so to speak!

Charlotte

Martin, Thanks for your kind comments - and helping me realise Mercury's night side does get way cold (-183 degrees C, from +427 degrees C on day side). When I wrote the poem, I hadn't imagined that level of cold, from other considerations, but evidently the long 'night' and lack of blanketing atmosphere do allow a drastic cooling even of the day-heated surface.

On 'marshalling thought' in meditation - I had in mind the sense 'to place [one's thoughts] in proper rank or position' - whatever that should be (as opposed to thoughts running haphazardly and unrestrained, the thinker being led by them). I should explain I mean 'meditation' actively (a conscious focussing on something seen as worthy of sustained contemplation), rather than passively (an attempt to blank the mind of thought - if even possible, to what end? A bafflement to me.) But either way, I reckon regulated breathing to be often associated with regulated thinking - whether as cause or effect, or a bit of both, not mattering in my poem! Thanks for posing the question, prompting me to think a bit more about it.

Charlotte - Thanks for your close reading of that poem, and I'm pleased you like it (especially the "killer ending"). Your points are, as usual, well-taken, and I tweaked accordingly.

I just spent a huge amount of time looking at popular boy names in the tornado alley states, trying to pick the best-sounding one for the last line. So I changed "Ian" to "Liam," supposedly a popular cowboy-culture name in Oklahoma, which is in the top 3 states for tornados.