Alice's Song

Looking at my looking glass,

“This isn’t me,” I said,

“What happened to my pinafore?

“Why are my eyes so red?”

And my reflection, as the thing

Is wont to do, replied,

“I don’t know who you think you are,

But I am on your side.”

“The Pinafore we left behind,

Abandoned on a reef;

The ship went down as you went down

On somebody named Steve.”

“We drank enough to drop a mule.

I can’t remember why

My face fell in the toilet bowl

A-swirling, ‘Let me die.’”

“Well, die, I haven’t done that yet.

Well, that’s what people say.

If you return my boxer shorts,

I’ll read your résumé.”

“Miss Rabbit, show the young man out.

He must have things to do.

Some hearts to break or notes to take.

(I would, if I were you.)”

Ex Nihilo

I wrote this about 8 years ago and I have never been able to find a place to put it. It is written in the rhyme scheme of ottava rima (abababcc, for you poetry junkies), and I always hoped that I would be able to integrate it into a larger poem.  But it seems to stand rather shakily on its own.

So, I publish it here, out of context, in the the hope that it will find a place on the Internet, if not in your heart or in your memory.


New York: A Fragment


Nothing in this City lasts; nothing is

       This dust, impossible to dust away—

Pollen, maybe, pulverized asbestos—
       The gulf between today and yesterday.
But nothing’s more insidious than this—
       This feeling of despair—what can I say?
Yet out of nothing, next to nothing—silt—
You and I, our Universe is built.

Gentlemen, start your engines...

Book done, back from Houston, and all caught up on work, I find myself able to blog again, and to breathe.


Houston was wonderful. Warm, huge, and friendly. Apart from the cabbies, who had no idea where they were going most of the time, and when presented with a Mapquest map (by the friendly folks at the Hotel ZaZa) were not quite able to read it sufficiently to travel even a few short blocks.


I was only in the city two days, so my chance to sample the city's culture was limited mostly to migas and visits to two excellent musuems--the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Menil Collection--and an afternoon at the Johnson Space Center--which brought back all sorts of starry-eyed memories from childhood, when I was scheduled to be an astronaut. Perhaps, if I had stuck with astrophysics in college I would be busy up there, right now.

No life is without regrets. And none lacks its consolations. If I were orbiting the Earth, for instance, I might never have bumped into you.

...

Even so, as we stare at the stars tonight, whatever our choices, or beliefs, let us remember the folks on STS-122, as they begin a new voyage tomorrow.



Safe journey.