[Martin Elster]

Hi Fliss,

I’m pleased you like “The Black Widow Nebula.” That’s one of my favorites, too. Speaking of publication, I feel fortunate that a pretty good amount of my work has found homes, though I don’t spend a great deal of time sending poems out. You seem to be extremely prolific. I admire that.
Added in: I want to add that I am extremely grateful for Eratosphere, which is an excellent place to develop one’s skill, grace, and confidence in the art of poetry.

Regarding the Winchcombe meteorite, I didn’t know about it, but just read it in Wikipedia. They mentioned that the fragment that landed in a driveway is now in the London Natural History Museum. It’s a remarkable coincidence that you know the family in whose driveway it fell! It is, indeed, a small world. It was the first meteorite found in Britain in thirty years (the last one was found in 1991) and the first carbonaceous one ever picked up in Britain. The Winchcombe fragment weighed 11 ounces. Other fragments were found in a nearby sheep field.

You may know that in a ghazal, the last couplet traditionally alludes in some way to the poet’s name. So the magpie pecking the world seemed like a fitting conclusion. I’ll bet the tailless magpie in your garden with grow its tail back. Maybe it was torn off by some predator or the poor bird had an accident of some kind. But hopefully it’s just the feathers that are missing and not something more vital. Apparently it flies (am I right?). So it’s probably not a serious injury.

You seem to have written quite a lot of space poetry. Do you think you might submit your collection for publication?

Celestial Euphony (my book) does include a few space poems. But I like your idea of having a whole book devoted to them. Maybe that could be a chapbook. Something to definitely think about. Thanks for suggesting it!

Best,
Martin

[F.F. Teague]

'The Black Widow Nebula' is excellent, Martin :-)

I'm not sure about prolific. Last month a work project was late so I had the full day for creativity; I wrote 20 poems, but that doesn't mean any were particularly good, lol.

Yes, that was a strange coincidence re. the meteorite. Mr W was keen for it to be on public display, for the learning opportunities it would provide. The family has three guinea pigs; fortunately the meteor just missed them :-)

I think I wrote a ghazal once, about an emerald dove at Slimbridge, a haven for waterbirds. At the time I was calling myself 'Emeralde'. Yes, the magpie without a tail is able to fly, thankfully, as there are a few cats in the neighbourhood.

You're welcome for the suggestion; best of luck with the chapbook :-)

Best wishes,
Fliss

[Martin Elster]

Thanks very much, Fliss!

Twenty poems in one day are way too many. It called to mind a little story that I read many moons ago in John Cage’s Silence (or perhaps one of his other books):

The following article includes excerpts from our conversation, originally published in the Winter 1986 issue of Inquiring Mind. —Wes Nisker

In the 1930s I went to see a Jungian psychiatrist who had me take a Rorschach test. He said it was clear from the Rorschach that I was in a state of confusion. He said that he could fix me so that I would write more music, but I was already writing so much music that the notion of writing more was alarming. So I didn’t go to him as a psychiatrist.

https://www.inquiringmind.com/articl..._14_john-cage/

I think I wrote a ghazal once, about an emerald dove at Slimbridge, a haven for waterbirds. At the time I was calling myself 'Emeralde'. Yes, the magpie without a tail is able to fly, thankfully, as there are a few cats in the neighbourhood.

I’d love to read your ghazal. I’m glad to hear that your magpie can fly. Domestic cats are notorious for catching birds — even ones that fly — creeping up on them from behind bushes and things.

I just started reading a book called The Peregrine by J. A. Baker. I heard about the book while watching an interview with Werner Herzog and Lawrence Krauss. Herzog rhapsodized about the book, and I’m beginning to see why. Baker becomes the peregrine himself.

[Martin Elster]

The Space Roadster

Elon, you’ve lost one of your cherry cars.
We doubt you miss it, though, for Starman steers it,
piercing the emptiness en route to Mars
and the ring of rocks beyond. What flyer fears it,

the absolute of space? Not this fake pilot!
Its gaze is black as the gaps between the stars,
and yet the worlds and suns seem to beguile it.
Who would have thought that dummies in red cars

could zip into Earth orbit and keep going?
They flabbergasted us, your booster rockets
which settled like a pair of sparrows (owing
to bang-up engineering). In your pockets

were all the funds you needed for a test
that bested your most hopeful expectations.
Now car and mannequin are on a quest
to beat our wildest visualizations

as Earth recedes with all its blues and whites
as Mars grows closer with its browns and coppers
as space becomes spectacular with lights
as we audacious apes become star-hoppers.


Even Elon Musk, engineer of the circus show, was surprised that his audacious stunt worked. “Apparently, there is a car in orbit around Earth,” he tweeted. His plan is for the $100,000 Tesla Roadster—with the message “Don’t panic!” stamped on the dashboard and David Bowie playing on the speakers—to cruise through high-energy radiation belts that circuit Earth towards deep space. —The Guardian, February 7, 2018

(Appeared in The New Verse News.)

[F.F. Teague]

You're welcome, Martin :-)

I should mention that many of the 20 poems were in free verse, lol. I like the little story.

I'm afraid the ghazal is terrible; I'd need to pretty much rewrite it before posting it on the 'sphere. The magpie has visited the garden and seems well. He/she tends to keep to the centre of the front lawn, where there's just one magnolia (pink/purple flowers).

I wish I had time to read books; The Peregine sounds very interesting.

Congrats on another poem in The New Verse News. I particularly enjoy 'like a pair of swallows' and the colours in the final verse.

Best wishes,
Fliss

[Martin Elster]

Hi Fliss,

What's wrong with free verse? Whatever you might call it, writing is writing. When you get your ghazal gelled, I'd like to see it. Maybe you could post it at Metrical. I'm glad the magpie is doing fine.

Last night my dog (a fifteen-year-old rat terrier) disappeared in the park we often walk in. It's a really big park with a pond, woods, thickets, hills, all kinds of paved and dirt paths. Ironically, a few weeks ago I ordered a brand new dog light to put on his harness, as his old one was getting very dim. (I have a battery for it somewhere, but I can’t locate it.) So he was wearing his old, dim light. We started out just before dusk. The full moon was rising in the East. About 20 minutes into the walk, he vanished from sight. It took me something like 3/4 of an hour to find him. By that time I was exhausted from walking all over the place. But that wasn’t enough. When we got home, he pulled me to a large tree (he was on a leash then) and grabbed something from the grass. I tried to pull him from it, but he was quicker than me. It looked like the tail of a squirrel — skin, fur, and perhaps some bones. I lifted his front end off the ground by his harness, thinking he might actually drop it, and yelling. The louder I yelled, the faster he chewed. He swallowed it like a snake swallows its prey. It took him about half a minute to get it into his stomach. (My legs are tired and I didn’t get much sleep, either.)

Thanks for saying you liked “like a pair of sparrows” and the colors of the planets. Here is another planet poem which appeared in Verse Wisconsin.

The Art of Exploration

They work like one machine

even as grunts and groans

of effort stay within

their spacesuits while they toil

with bedrock, boulders, stones,

loader and excavator,

creating in a crater

a building that will screen

them from the ultra-thin

Martian atmosphere,

and so as not to broil

from ultraviolet rays.

They plan to engineer

extensive passageways

atop which they’ll assemble

a shape that should resemble

the ancient Astrodome

in disrepair at home.

It will not quite be art,

but it will be a start.

[Martin Elster]

This one is more about a star than a planet, but anyway ...

Arcturus

Arcturus sparks the night
when croci spring from the earth.
Light left its stellar berth
years, years, and years ago.
On seeing its face (the glow
as orange as the fruit),
we know our planet’s flight
has brought the robins to root
for grubs in parks, backyards,
and along those strips of lawn
that split our boulevards.
They trill a tune at dawn,
hunt angleworms at noon,
and slumber when the moon
comes up and greets the Bear,
which bright Arcturus follows
as it glisters through the air
ringing with the swallows
by day and, in the dark,
the singing of the lark
till Vega, overhead,
says, “Time to go to bed!”

(Appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.)

[F.F. Teague]

Nothing wrong with free verse in general, Martin, just the way I set about it, lol. And the ghazal really is ghastly, probably unsalvageable. I was laughing at it earlier today.

I enjoyed the account of your dog. It sounds like he keeps you fit. Are rat terriers quite inquisitive? Of course the Dog Star is the brightest star in the night sky (I just checked that online).

Congrats on Verse Wisconsin and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily; these are great poems. I like the robins and the swallows particularly :>)

[Martin Elster]

I could fill in the details of the dog episode (like how I lost sight of him), but that would take too much space. Needless to say, I was quite worried. I thought that, though unlikely, he might have tried to make his way home (which would have been disastrous, not only because he'd have had to cross a couple of dangerous streets, but also because I would have spent the whole night, till dawn, at the park before giving up the search). We do, indeed, keep each other fit. (He is almost impossible to keep on a leash, because he has no leash manners and generally lags behind, so I end up dragging him. So I go places where I can, for the most part, let him run free. He mostly follows me, except that he tends to stray away when scavenging for trash — and there's plenty of it around, even in the park.)

But to answer your question, I don't know about all rat terriers, but mine is about as inquisitive as a canine can get. Plus strong-willed, playful, and crazy. (Though not as much as in his younger days.)

I'm glad you enjoyed those last two poems. Yes, Sirius is the brightest star by far. It has a mysterious companion, a white dwarf star. You can spot Sirius in the wintertime just east of Orion and always following him. Yup, the Dog Star. The constellation is called Canis Major (the Great Dog). Robert Frost wrote a cute little poem about it, along with the Canis Minor (the Little Dog). It’s another dog following Orion. It contains the bright star Procyon. Procyon is higher in the sky than Sirius.

[Martin Elster]

The Dog Star

There’s a dog in space! Am I delirious?
No! Its eye is a star they call Sirius;
**The brightest by far,
**it’s a binary star—
with its unseen companion, mysterious!

The companion is known as “the pup.”
Do you think that I just made that up?
**That white dwarf is as small
**as a puppy’s toy ball.
If you ask, “Is that true?” I’d say, “Yup!”