The spoke-like structures on Venus?
Veins branching on the back of an eyeball,
a telescope turned by accident into a mirror.
Though at first Percival Lowell thought, Canals,
like the ones he thought he’d seen on Mars,
evidence of an advanced civilization.
The rainbow carrots tasted sweeter for their novelty.
The purple, when shaved, yellow at the center.
The yellow ones as bright as bananas.
“In order to compose, just remember a melody
no one has thought of,” suggested Robert Schumann.
Said the professor, “World War I memorials
for the missing dead, unrecoverable, bodies
atomized by ordnance, were often simple. Roofless
columns. Or arches, with their open space.
Absence and presence in interdependence.”
(Science Times, April 18, 2023)
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Boyer Rickel
Picture Rupert Loydell
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