Science Poems for January 2011: 20

Last April I posted a science sonnet a day in celebration of National Poetry Month (index with links here). This month I am posting a science poem a day, written in various traditional forms, in honor of Science Online 2011.

The "fifth annual international meeting on Science and the Web" ran from Jan. 13-16. Click on the logo below to access the conference page, which has links to posts, tweets, photos, and videos from the event.



As with the sonnets, my January poems take their cues from science-based articles. I also have two works in a special science poem section (vol. 33 #5/6) of Star*Line, journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read my "Ciliate Sestina" here.

Also, two sonnets from last April's collection, "In Development" and "Manipulations," have made it into Open Laboratory 2010 Click on the badge below for links to the 50 essays, 6 poems, and 1 cartoon in the collection.


(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

Today's poem takes its cue from "European beavers construct ideal habitats for bats" (BBC Earth News, Jan. 17, 2011). Click on the article link to learn more about the research. To learn more about the traditional poetic structure used, click on the form name.

Sound Lines
(Form: Ronsardian Ode)

In Poland's northern forests, beavers build.
They thin the trees
that fall to gnawing as a stream is filled.
The canopies
no longer harbor branches that confuse
with extra echoes swelling to a ruse.
A bat can hear
an insect clear.
Blank space augments the sounds they use.

Within the stream cool pools of water spread,
and midges breed
where beavers dammed. In time the flies have sped
where bats can feed.
Restored, the beavers' industry begat,
for aerial and hawking types of bat,
more woodland feasts:
a boon for beasts
dependent on their habitat.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too


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