Science-Art

Do You Remember?

Do you remember when we were young?
How sugar plums shone in the sun
How the moon rose in the sky
Like a giant cheese way up high
How the clouds sailed scudding by
Till it felt as though we and the trees
Moved under the windswept sky.

Do you remember?

Do you remember the dreams we had?
Of dragons lurking in the dark
And fairy dust sprinkled over grass
sparkling in morning light as feet passed
Across the fields of waving grain
Days that lasted full of sunshine
And how it never seemed to rain?

Do you remember?

Josephine Lay 2018

You’re a quarter million miles away
A blue and white swirling globe
A beacon lighting the blackness of space
The Earth is a sight to behold.
Awaiting my Soyuz taxi
I’m being picked up very soon
I’ve studied the landscape in my LRV
Of the dark side of the moon.
I spot a small bright speck in the heavens
That will guarantee my egress.
Excitement quickens my breathing
It is the Soyuz come from the ISS.
When they land I have some astounding news
A discovery beyond belief
For days I’ve kept it all to myself
To tell others would be a relief.
The lunar rover’s batteries were dead
Which I was replacing with the last spare
Sat in a crater, nose pointing down
A spacecraft had crashed over there.
It wasn’t man-made I’m sure of that
It came from some other star
Smooth and metallic – no windows or doors
Shaped like a cuban cigar.
I’m considering telling the Soyuz crew
Or wait till I get home?
Whatever I say, there’s no getting away
From the news that we’re now not alone.
It would devastate the whole of mankind
Greatly alter the status quo
So I’m going to forget that I ever saw it
And the World will never know.

By Marion Feasey

There isn’t a man in the moon,
there’s a little child,
and it is so sweet and round
that people just want to squish its cheeks.
So it shrinks and it shrinks and it shrinks
to escape the pinches
till there is only a sliver left.
Then the people look away.
So the moon grows and grows and grows again,
giggling with glee,
till it is full and fat
and the people
can’t help but grab its cheeks again.

@ChloeJPoetry

It seems we’re in the gutter now,
but some of us have looked at stars,
and aimed beyond humanity’s dreams.
They reached the moon, and found somehow
its dust and rock and cosmic scars
meant more than just young lovers’ beams –

they saw earthrise, and showed us all
this fragile bauble, wrapped in lace,
and it began – our quest to find
salvation for our tiny ball,
a future for the human race
and all that lives; a whole, entwined.

And now, trapped in a carbon tent
where microplastics choke the sea
and particles condemn the air,
remember this: that once we went
where we thought we would never be,
and came back safe. Forget despair.

Brenda Read-Brown

When dreams fail
The stars fall like crushed diamons
Once they had spun as cogs
Nestled together in intracate dance
Now they lay as puddles of loathing
And we consume their flesh
Gorging on insignifigances
Lapping up the pain
Blinking at the luster light
We grow sharp and hard
Adimantian Kings Imperial and cold