Two Poems by Alicia Sometimes

JOCELYN BELL BURNELL

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If we assume we’ve arrived:

we stop searching, we stop developing
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proud pulsars
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residue

of massive stars

collapsing into

a neutron star

strobing supernova
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spherical and dense

the size of a bustling city

more mass than our sun
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beams of electromagnetic radiation

whirling from its magnetic poles

recurring signals – palpitating refrains from space
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– first observed in 1967

by Jocelyn Bell Burnell

and Antony Hewish –`
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Someone takes a photo of student Burnell:

Look happy dear, you’ve just made a discovery!
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in 1974 Hewish receives

a Nobel Prize in Physics

(alongside Martin Ryle)
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millisecond pulsars can siphon matter

and momentum from its companion
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Burnell wins other weighty awards

an abundance of all her significant work
.

she donates a substantial sum to further

those who are most often ignored in science—

in hope they strive becoming physics researchers
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pulsars radiating light
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in multiple wavelengths

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BIRD CALLS

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We’re keeping an invisible chart

delineating the days between every

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face to face conversation. We begin

to get creative in confinement: turn 

 >

ourselves into maple origami, fashion 

hammocks out of blankets, craft vessels 

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from old vinyl. Shape bread into words.

Invert every room. We are undergoing

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lasting transformations. It’s impossible

listening to Charles Mingus standing 

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still. You just want to scoop yourself up

and parachute from on top of the house

 >

as sonorous notes chase you, freefalling.

Each breath outside becomes triumphant.

 .

Anything to nurture the fierce yearning

the longing for touch, even predictability.

 <

We reach out and deliver daisies and cake.

Envelopes with wine red pencil marks. Trick

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cards with faces. We stretch out our ears into

the afternoon sun listening to the wattlebird.

 >

They sing in sparkling paragraphs. No

thought or care of yesterdays or tomorrows

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or any afterlife. But we do. Always 

carrying this extended memory with us. 

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Constructing our own symphonies

of everyone’s shared experiences –

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united tapestry of single notes

Alicia Sometimes is a writer and broadcaster. Her poems are published in Best Australian Science Writing, Best Australian Poems, Meanjin, Griffith Review and more. She is director and co-writer of the science-poetry planetarium shows, Elemental and Particle/Wave. Her TedxUQ talk about the passion of combining art with science can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch Website: www.aliciasometimes.com