We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

4.11.20

Notes from the Log of the SS Enterprise?






Notes from the Log of the SS Enterprise?

The eye of calm is roughly surrounded.

High clouds show up brightly

clear or obscured by stark mechanics,

ragged intensity rapidly intensifying.


Prone to fluctuations,

large eyes become sustained.

Thunderstorms form and gather.

Rainbands start rotating, updrafts drop.


Outside the forming eye,

pushing air flows inward to descend.

Many aspects remain a mystery.

A ring ejects excess air.


A clear simple drop in speed –

rising and sinking columns of air

may strengthen and organize, 

"choked" partially, quickly abandoned.


The moat between eyeballs 

changes the distance. Filamentation zones

near any vortex are pronounced strong. 

Visible rotational suction may be else.


Unusual cyclones remain stationary.

Storm phenomena spawn 

individual convective cells.

Tornadic landfall can allow circulations.


It is a curve with height, resembling 

a dome smallest at the bottom.

An absent maximum, typically,

wavelengths from space.


An aircraft flying is a common mistake,

especially to exit the violent opposite.

Polar lows are relatively warm.

Water can feature deep winds.


At the boundary of different

are extratropical classic severe clouds.

Low systems can be very hazardous.

The fastest winds are multiple.


All are theorised to have doppler velocity.

Observations on the south pole of Saturn

display tens of kilometers high spacecraft:

locked, clearly defined, not previously seen.


On any planet, observe a great red spot, 

very large, on both poles. The mission: 

to have a dipole eye structure. See also 

portal, radius, maximum wind. Surge!



Written for Weekly Scribblings #44: Eye of the Hurricane at Poets and Storytellers United. 


Uninspired, I tried an erasure poem taken from the Wikipedia article Eye (cyclone). (Hurricane, cyclone and typhoon are all words for the same kind of tropical storm, called different names in different places.) I had fun arriving at a lot of scientific-sounding pretentious nonsense, then the mention of Saturn gave me a different perspective as to what I had actually found.


Image: Public Domain. 
Hurricane Isabel as seen from the International Space Station showing a well-defined eye at the center of the storm. Courtesy of Mike Trenchard, Earth Sciences & Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. 
From his vantage point high above the Earth in the International Space Station, Astronaut Ed Lu captured this broad view of Hurricane Isabel. The image, ISS007-E-14750, was taken with a 50 mm lens on a digital camera.



23 comments:

  1. What concerns me about space exploration is the total waste for so little return. If only we could maintain our own planet so all living things could exist out of danger that would be great. But we can't do that it is too difficult so try travel to other planets at many times the cost...that makes sense!

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    1. I totally agree with you! SF is one thing – so long as it remains fantasy.

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  2. Hey, I always appreciate a bit of Sci-Fi!

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  3. Rosemary, this is fascinating! And wouldn't it be nice to escape to another planet right now??

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    1. As Robin says, I wish we'd fix our own! (Which I guess is another way of saying what you just said.)

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  4. I feel like standing next to captain Kirk reading the whirlwind of observations in space. I will follow your mission uhhh Loved reading this Fun and sounds very scientific :)

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    1. So glad you could enter into the spirit of it, Marja.

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  5. All these verses sound so very scientific yet in there is this bit of humanity and self responsibility
    "The moat between eyeballs"

    Muchđź’™love

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    1. I'm, glad I got that in there too. Thanks, Gillena.

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  6. All those $$$ spent in saving our environment. Just think about it! I can't believe there are those who actually want to book a trip to Mars!

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  7. I love the exact words -- the strange effect of taking the storm to space. I find erasures to be a difficult exercise, nicely executed.

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    1. Thank you. I find erasures difficult too, but this source material was rich.

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  8. I had trouble getting inspired too, Rosemary, as I have no experience of hurricanes as such, just gales. Erasure and found poems are perfect in that situation. Looking at the image, yours is like an ekphrastic poem. I love the (almost) alliteration in ‘ragged intensity rapidly intensifying’ and the phrase ‘moat between eyeballs’, which makes the storm more threatening.

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    1. I'm so glad you liked those lines, Kim. They were among the ones I was most pleased with myself to have found.

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  9. The title made me smile. I'm a huge Star Trek fan, so I love seeing a glimpse of one my favorite shows in a poetry.

    It seems that too may of us had a bit of trouble with this topic. For me, it wasn't so much that I couldn't find something to write about, but more that all I thought about seemed to be riddled with explosive, stormy, volatile... emotions no one really needs right now. I wanted to write about calm, while my heart and ink were all hurricane.

    I think you did a good job with the tone and mood. They reflect both your state of mind and read like a Captain's log. I imagined the poem was being read to me by a science officer--that made me smile.

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  10. Ah , the SS Enterprise, if only that experience was possible - but would I go...?
    But you are right, we need to fix this planet first, rather than find a new one to destroy.
    Anna :o]

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    1. I'd sooner watch it onscreen than get on board for real! But It's nice to imagine.

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  11. I feel like we all just traveled in space!

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    1. Now I wonder of that was a comment on the election! But that might be more like time travel, perhaps. (Back to the Future?)

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  12. I love the direction you took with this one, Rosemary. Blue skies
    to you!

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