Science Poems for January 2011: 6

Last April I posted a science sonnet a day in celebration of National Poetry Month (index with links here). This January 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" occurs Jan. 13-16, 2011. Click on the logo below to access their daily digest (already active) on paper.li.



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.

Today's poem takes its cue from "Did Early Humans Migrate Across a Watery, Green Sahara?" (Jennifer Welsh, Discover Blogs, Dec. 30, 2010). 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 below the title.

Steps Ahead of the Dunes
(Form: Etheree)

Parched
Desert
Once was swamps --
Rivers -- grasslands --
Post-glaciation
Migration corridors
Across the wet Sahara.
Ancestral footprints crossed the mud,
Perhaps earlier than expected,
Their alternate routes out of Africa.

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