Progress (NaPoWriMo14 #29)

This penultimate NaPoWriMo effort is inspired by TychoGirl‘s cut word style. I have neither her library of excellent old texts and images, nor her flair for combining the two, however.

progress
Image Courtesy NASA, Curiosity rover.

—

Too often
the struggle
is to pay
attention
find the now
and live fully
moment
by moment
where you are
but…
Sometimes
you just have to turn around
and look back at
how
far
you’ve
come.

Your Sky (NaPoWriMo14 #28)

 

 

 

 

Two versions from the same start today. The words-only has a different feel from the words+image version. I leave it to you which one speaks better.

 

—

Your Sky

—

Stand outside on a dark night
with open senses
and the sky goes on forever.

Ten thousand stars
shining into the universe
but the glitter you see –
photons destined
for your eyes only.

We can talk about it
examine the same stars
see the same colors
use telescopes and spectrographs
and analytic tools
to count and separate wavelengths
interpret different parcels of light.

We can understand it together
but outside
on a dark night
the forever sky
is all yours.

The Purpose of Life (NaPoWriMo14 #27)

(In which, late in the month, we get a little tired. A little cynical.)

—

There are those who posit
life itself is merely
a clever pathway for
planets to lose their heat.

If the idea is true
what planet could ask for
better little heat engines
than we humans?

While not too romantic
the thought gives some hope
that we might find ways to live
in better equilibrium.

In our current zeal we’re
doing our job a bit
too well, jeopardizing
our perpetuity.

We do greater service
to entropy if we
don’t consume ourselves to
extinction or irrelevance.

Because it would be so
inefficient if Earth
had to start over again
with cockroaches.

Unmosaicked (NaPoWriMo14 #25)

Unmosaicked

[Viking Orbiter 1 – unprocessed image number F924A06 from http://petermasek.tripod.com/voex01.html%5D

—

Image mosaics of other worlds
constructed by clever automation
photometrically corrected
spatially co-registered
melded invisibly
a vast digital advance over the
hand-suturing of photos
from decades ago.

Now as then, only the best make it
into the final collage
high signal-to-noise
low smear and background
greatest dynamic rage.
Some significant number
of not-as-good frames
fall into the rejection pile.

Whence the redundants
images not sharp enough
oversaturated or otherwise flawed
no obvious practical use
archived nonetheless
for posterity and post-docs
to excavate and find something new
hidden among the damaged bytes.