Needing more Cosmos

In memory of   Steve Sneyd

Deepening wind and light
accelerating by yet captured
in a moment of reflection

© Gerald England

Composed: Hyde, 23rd December 2019

Publication

2020 Cosmopoetry (Internet)

A contribution to Weekend Reflections.

Red October

Red October

Remnants of Hurricane Ophelia
draws air full of Saharan dust
and debris from forest fires
in Spain and Portugal.
A bright sun struggles
to break through.

© Gerald England

Composed, Hyde, 16th October 2017

Publication

2018 Cosmopoetry (Internet)

Spooky astroku

well beyond the light
twenty-two miles a second
Spooky* whizzes by

© Gerald England

Composed, Hyde, 1st November 2015

Publication

2016 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2016 Ackworth born gone West (Internet)

* Spooky is a reference to the comet/asteroid that passed by the Earth in 2015.

A contribution to Skywatch Friday.

Astrohaiga 4

evening energy reaches out across sand and silent sea

© Gerald England

Composed: Hyde, 15th May 2013

Publication

2013 Cosmopoetry (Internet)

A contribution to Skywatch Friday.

Astrohaiga 2

August evening
so many colours
so many swirls

© Gerald England

Composed: Hyde, 15th May 2013

Publication

2013 Cosmopoetry (Internet)

A contribution to Skywatch Friday.

Astrohaiga 1

as the tide rolls out
temporary pools reflect
the lowering sun

© Gerald England

Composed: Hyde, 15th May 2013

Publication

2013 Cosmopoetry (Internet)

A contribution to
Skywatch Friday;
Weekend Reflections;
Scenic Weekends.

Jodrell Bank Observatory Haiga

my father
the long distance runner
next to Copernicus

© Gerald England

Composed: Hyde, 3rd April 2011

Publications

2011 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2011 Ackworth Born, Gone West (Internet)

A contribution to:
Skywatch Friday;
The Weekend in Black and White.

tanka 45 (Solar eclipse 2011)

Pse 2011 In Magurele (Romania) photograph © Andreea Fazacas
an eclipse tonight
posted a friend on Facebook
but by then too late
out of my window blackness
others' visions seen online

© Gerald England

Composed: Hyde, 16th January 2011

Publications

2010 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2010 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

A contribution to Skywatch Friday.

spongy path (d59b)

a spongy path
under a silent sky
going nowhere

© gerald england

Composed: Hyde, 17th April 2010

Publications

2010 Spring Haiku (Internet)
2010 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2010 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

A contribution to Good Fences and Skywatch Friday.

The last eclipse of 2009

PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE OVER THE NORTH OF ROMANIA
photo © Constantin Psenitchi
five hours before
the end of the decade
above my window
the cold earth is eating
a piece of blue moon

© gerald england

Composed: Hyde, 31st December 2009

Publications

2010 Winter Haiku (Internet)
2010 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2010 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

SUMMER METEOR POETRY 2009

a dusty filament
drifts across Earth's orbit
raining light

© Gerald England

Composed: Hyde, 6th November 2009

Publications

2009 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2009 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

The Great Galileo Spin

A wordle by the late Mandy Smith.
THE GREAT GALILEO SPIN

Pisa born man
whose father carries out experiments on strings
to support his musical theories.

Off you go to the Camaldolese Monastery
on the magnificent forested hillside
at Vallombrosa.

They want you to be a medicine man
but the mathematics of Euclid and Archimedes
mesmerise you more.

In "La Balancitta" you describe Archimedes' method
of finding the specific gravities of substances
using a balance.

You correspond with Clavius and Guidobaldo del Monte
concerning the theorems you have proved
on the centres of gravity of solids.

You lecture on the dimensions and location of hell
in Dante's Inferno
at the Academy in Florence.

The idea comes that one can test
theories about falling bodies
using an inclined plane
to slow down
the rate of
descent.

At the university of Padua
you teach Euclid's geometry
and geocentric astronomy
to medical students.

In three public lectures
you argue against Aristotle,
use parallax arguments to prove
that the New Star
can not be close to the Earth
and come out as a Copernican.

You grind and polish lenses
until you have an instrument
with a magnification of around eight or nine.

You demonstrate to the Venetian Senate
the commercial and military applications
of the telescope you call a perspicillum
for ships at sea
and sell the sole rights
for manufacture to the Senate.

In the book "Starry Messenger"
you claim to have seen
mountains on the Moon,
four small bodies orbiting Jupiter
and proved the Milky Way
is made up of tiny stars.

In a letter to the Grand Duchess
you vigorously attack the followers of Aristotle,
arguing strongly
for a non-literal interpretation
of Holy Scripture
when that would contradict
facts about the physical world
proved by mathematical science.

You quite clearly state
that the Copernican theory
is not just a mathematical calculating tool,
but a physical reality.

You hold that the Sun is located
at the centre of the revolutions
of the heavenly orbs
and does not change place,
and that the Earth rotates on itself
and moves around it.

You confirm this view
not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments,
but also by producing many for the other side,
especially some pertaining to physical effects
whose causes perhaps cannot be determined
in any other way,
and other astronomical discoveries
that clearly confute the Ptolemaic system
but agree admirably with this other position.

Found guilty of heresy
and condemned to lifelong imprisonment,
the sentence amounts to house arrest,
living first with the Archbishop of Siena,
then later returning home to Arcetri
though spending the rest of your life watched over
by officers from the Inquisition.

Your "Discourses"
are smuggled out of Italy,
and taken to Leyden in Holland
and published.

There you develop
ideas of the inclined plane
assuming that the speed acquired
by the same movable object
over different inclinations of the plane are equal
whenever the heights of those planes are equal.

You describe an experiment using a pendulum
to verify this property of inclined planes
and give a theorem on acceleration of bodies in free fall
and finally conclude
that the distance that a body moves from rest
under uniform acceleration
is proportional to the square of the time taken.

You die in early 1642,
your body concealed
and only placed in a fine tomb
in the church in 1737
by the civil authorities against
the wishes of many in the Church.

On 31st October 1992,
350 years after your death,
Pope John Paul II gives an address
on behalf of the Catholic Church
in which he admits
that errors had been made
by the theological advisors in your case.

He declares the Galileo case closed,
but he does not admit
they were wrong to convict
on a charge of heresy
because of the belief
that the Earth rotates round the sun.

O Galileo
how do you spin in your grave?

© Gerald England

Composed: Hyde, 17th September 2009

Publications

2009 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2009 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

A contribution to Skywatch Friday.

For Astropoetry to the International Year of Astronomy 2009 2nd quarter.

MOON AND VENUS IN THE MORNING AURORA, 23rd April 2009
photo © Valentin Grigore.
something stirs
on one of the moons
of Saturn

© Gerald England

Composed: Hyde, 25th June 2009

Publication

2009 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2009 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

A contribution to Skywatch Friday.

(as22)

Crux over Gemini Observatory, Mauna Kea, Hawaii
Photo: © Ovidiu Vaduvescu

in a cold field
on the other side of my world
the southern cross

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 12th December 2008

Publications

2008 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2008 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

A contribution to Skywatch Friday.

(as21)

Photograph © 1997 Valentin Grigore.

Valentin Grigore who granted me permission to use his photograph is the founder of SARM (Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy). Their 2008 project was an Intercontinental Astro-ecological Verse Tournament celebrating the centenary of the first Romanian astronomical society.

The rules were to compose one-line astropoems with maximum 20 syllables, adorned by celestial images as ecologic arguments.

My own contribution was

Hale Bopp's tail hovers another crop of early potatoes

Composed: Gee Cross, 4th August 2008

Publications

2008 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2008 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

Republished as a contribution to Skywatch Friday.

(as20)

Mars passes through the Great Bear
Is there anybody there?

© Gerald England

Marte langa Ursa Mare:
"Cineva-i acolo oare?"

Romanian translation by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

Composed: Gee Cross, 21st March 2008

Publications

2008 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2008 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

A Double Haiku for Newton

A DOUBLE HAIKU FOR NEWTON

a tired Newton
stretched out under a tree
was almost asleep

a falling apple
accelerated his brain
straight into orbit

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 27th October 2007

Publications

2007 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2007 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

(as12)

photograph © Eugen Florin Marc taken April 28 2007 in Romania.
a southern blemish
three times earth's size
tomorrow's aurora

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 3rd July 2007

Publication

2007 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2007 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)

(b26)

radiant sky
thirty-four thousand colours
ripple

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 27th June 2007

Publication

2007 Cosmopoetry (Internet)

(as16) M27

first found nebula
in the last named constellation
is Goldilocks there?

© gerald england

Composed: Gee Cross, 23rd June 2007

Publication

2007 Cosmopoetry (Internet)
2007 Ackworth born, gone West (Internet)