Posts Tagged ‘comet’
now available: a glimpse of dragon
a glimpse of dragon, second poetry book in the ‘glimpse of’ series, is now available at Westminster Books in Fredericton.
~
The book is illustrated with my black and white drawings and considers extraordinary things in ordinary life. These are poems about comets in the sky, ghost cars in the covered bridge and dragons lurking in the campfire.
~
~
campfire dragons
~
dragons prowl
in balsam
backcrawl in amber
blisters of pitch
~
dragons lurk
under mantles of smoke
blacken the stones
spurt throatfuls of fire
~
dragons leap
to the Draco sky
watch us grow small
with sparking eyes
~
close their lids
and sleep in flight
~
~
You can also order a glimpse of dragon at Amazon, click here.
~
I hope you enjoy ‘a glimpse of dragon.’
Jane
places off-planet #5 – Comet Hale-Bopp 1996
Comet Hale-Bopp could be seen from Earth in late 1996 and early 1997. Its strange name is from the independent co-discoverers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp. Hale-Bopp was a large comet, with a nucleus of about 60 miles in diameter. It had two visible tails, one of gas and one of dust, and had a third tail of sodium. It has been called the most-observed comet in history. Hale-Bopp won’t be back until 4385!
I have no specific memory of Hale-Bopp itself, although I do remember a common saying in our household in 1997 was to greet almost every out-of-place object with “Hail! Bopp!”. The poem I wrote after seeing the comet is all I have to know how it appeared to me.
Do you remember seeing Hale-Bopp?
photo from Wikimedia Commons, taken by Philipp Salzgeber
~
~
Hale-Bopp
also a comet
~
Hail! bright star
~
a flare in the western sky
a diamond
~
a sparkler
embedded in smoke
~
~
© Jane Tims 1997
places off-planet #4 – Comet Hyakutake 1996
Comet Hyakutake had a nucleus of about 2 km in diameter and a tail-length of 570 million km. The Ulysses spacecraft is known to have flown through Haykutake’s tail. One of the comet’s notable characteristics was its blue-green color. It was bright to the naked eye for only a few days.
I remember Hyakutake as a ‘knock-you-off-your-feet’ surprise. I knew it could be seen, but I hadn’t made any effort to look for it. One night as I arrived home, I saw it shining through the trees at the end of the driveway, and climbed the snowbank at the end of the drive to investigate. I saw the comet and literally stumbled backward in amazement!
Did you see Comet Hyakutake in 1996?
photo is from Wikimedia Commons
taken by E. Kolmhofer and H. Raab of the Johannes-Kepler-Observatory
~
~
Hyakutake
a comet
~
she runs in the solar wind
pale night woman
her face to the sun
hair and petals streaming
~
ephemeral, strewn in whispers
soft fistfuls of light
tresses tangled
in the fingers of the forest
~
~
© Jane Tims 1997
places off-planet #2 – three comets
In my life so far, I have seen three major comets – Halley’s Comet in 1986, Hyakutake in 1996, and Hale-Bopp in 1997. There have been comets since then, I know, but I have always been asleep!
A comet is composed of a ‘nucleus’ of rock, dust and frozen gas, and a tail. The tail is formed when the gasses in the nucleus are heated by the sun and create an atmosphere or ‘coma’. The sun’s radiation and the solar wind cause the coma to flow away from the sun as a tail. Since the comet can be moving away from the sun, sometimes this means the comet moves in the direction of its tail!
How many comets have you seen?
~
~
Comet
~
from the Greek
koman
~
to wear long hair
~
© Jane Tims 1997
nichepoetryandprose 