Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education, STEM, Poetry

Ed Hessler

Good morning from the Center for Global Environmental Education at Hamline University, St. Paul, MN on August 13, the 225th day of 2021 (39.36% remains).

Sunrise is at 6:12 am and sunset at 8:21 and between those times there will be14h 04m 11s of sunlight. I love the digit reversals in the minutes, 12 and 21.

Today is "king" of the meat cuts day and Foodimentary has details and some food history. A giant career leap is mentioned, from designing Easy Bake Ovens to missile design.

Quote. Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains.--Diane Ackerman

Today's poem is by Michael Palmer.

This note about the poem accompanied the poem when I received it from Poetry Daily.

Two images, or perhaps memories, conjoin at the source of this piece: the first from Chris Marker’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece, La jetée (The Jetty), constructed almost entirely of still photographs; the second, my wife, Cathy Simon, scattering her brother’s ashes in the form of a spiral at the site of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake (which is tidal). The poem takes off from there, invoking lovers, invoking Smithson, invoking the fires that have become virtually omnipresent as part of our new reality during climate change (the coming apocalypse?).

Maybe I should add that thirty-two “Midnights,” all written late at night during the COVID-19 lockdown, form the third and final section of my latest book, "Little Elegies for Sister Satan." It seemed a good time to receive “visitors.”

You can visit Robert Smithson's great Earth Work in this video (3m 17s).