Science-Art

You single spherical satellite
one moon orbiting our world
As the sun moves across your face
leaving traces of earth shadow
your phases form;
crescent and sickle; half-moon and full,
the eternal dance of the month’s return.
You only show us one side of your face
one bright aspect of your dual personality.
The speed with which you spin is always
equalling your orbit, so, that shyly and
slyly you keep your other side hidden.

Although you pull the tides of our oceans
our gravity causes moonquakes below
your crust…
your features remain immobile as your
bleached surface shines silver in the dark
a lamp for lovers, a mythical mood maker,
our life-cycle mother.

Josephine Lay 2019

In the silent, comfortable company of nobody

Naked, I immerse myself ‘til soaked in silver light that falls

Is the Moon looking at me?

Quixotically, quicksilver, time passing all too soon

And I’m dancing with a salacious, silver, shining ball

Am I looking at the Moon?

Bright, so blinding bright that I cannot see

Insane, exotic madness initiates its call

Is the Moon looking at me?

The sublime lines of Claire de Lune

Hypnotic highs and lows envelope me within its thrall

Am I looking at the Moon?

A once-dark, haunted landscape becomes a white sea

Shimmering grass and tall trees covered by a ghostly grey shawl.

Is the Moon looking at me?

In a luminous looniness drunken swoon

I experience the whole world so differently

Am I looking at the Moon?

Or is the Moon looking at me?

by Stephen Thatcher

I saw the echo scamper ashore

It was wet and cold and so alone

I saw the echo sit and cry

Though no eyes it had the tears still poured

I smelt the echo as vibration

Thrumming and strumming a silent sound

I smelt the echo in pinks and mauves

Lost in sensation of colours blurred

I tasted the echo in sugared tones

Angelica, cinnamon, walnut swirl

I tasted the echo with bitter rind

Enclosed the centre of withered pith

I scensed the echo in the air

Stars glinting, and seething

I scensed the scho climb a board

A craft dark in ghostly lore

I felt the echo as it lay

Broken and fading another shade

I felt the echo as it fought

Life fragile death-sharp like a claw

I heared the echo call my name

Softly, sweetly, within a velvet bow

I heard the echo shout the word

Clashing contrasts cut to the bone

The crescent guards the serpents slumber, cursed to sleep so man can wonder.
It once lived free and fed on stars, and hope was lost between its jaws.
Mankind obeyed its scaly wrath, as light was lost above its path.
Till moons anger cast a sleeping spell, and in a trance, the trickster fell.
The ages pass, new stars were born – glittering heavens where once were torn.
We stare above and wonder why, snake tried to steal the joy from sky!

By Jason Conway

The moon is reclining,
declining
to stand upright
tonight.

by @ChloeJPoetry

In the desert at night it is cold
Ice in the crevices
The sky is clear and dark
Stars shine there
How do you see them?
For me time moves faster
I live longer
It is relative
My stars are streaks
I live in a blurred circle of white blue
My desert
My sky
All around me is silver glitter
I lift my limbs high

Walking on this stony ground
Pushing through this thorny crowd
Celestial bodies cry out
Sometime I wish to dismount
The fires of creation
That made me seek sensation
And so the –
Stars are shredding my heart
The sun is shredding my soul apart
The Moon is mashing up my mind
I wonder what they will find
Dissecting
Me, Myself and I

By Saffy

Did Life fall into this cradle
This Earth, this home –
We now attempt to climb out of?
Or is it more than a cradle
Some crucible or potters wheel
Shaping and baking us in forms renewed?

Maybe in truth it is a bit of both
And as humanity takes its first toddler steps
We begin to see the variety that our world holds

LIFE –

Life here investigated
In case of alien brethren
Life searched for by the heart if not the mind
As the astronaut steps out into the void
For themselves, for us, for a future
A future – As yet unknown
A future for us all
As we grow too large for this world to contain
A cradle we have explored from end to end

But it is only with eyes freshly opened
To the wonders beyond
That we begin to see what we have missed
That which hides in plan sight
The beauty of our world
We seek its twins, our mirrors –
Its twisted folly of form

OUT THERE

And if we are on our own?
Then look at the wonders the search has wrought
And if we are not?
Then maybe we will truly see ourselves
For the first time

Until then the void is calling
And all these things?

These investigations
These satellites
And images –
Are our jumping off point
Our call to the unknown

Do you wonder what it will answer?

By Sarah Snell-Pym