The Squid Returns

painting by Katie Schuler

My old squid poem "Watasenia Scintillans Addresses the New Graduates" is up today at The Last Word on Nothing. Don't miss the audio, with wonderful music and sound design by Grant Balfour. You can read and listen here. 

One New Poem at LWON

Wes Hicks on Unsplash

An exciting announcement: I am now a contributor to the group science writing blog The Last Word on Nothing. If you are a science writer, you know why this is a big deal. If you aren't: trust me. It is. 

I'll be sharing my science poems, essays, and other work over there every few weeks. My first post—a new-old poem about birds and evolution and learning hard lessons—is here. 

You can sign up for weekly blog updates here and follow LWON on Facebook and Twitter. (It's always a good read; I recommend it.)

America's Weirdest State Symbols

The bald eagle. The Lincoln Memorial. The Stars and Stripes. Symbols matter in the United States.

But regional pride is important, too, and every state in the union has its own heritage to celebrate—sometimes in odd ways.

As children, we all learned about our state flags and state birds—but who can name their official state soil? How about their state crustacean?

Read more at National Geographic.

Save (Me From) the Whales

Goodness gracious me. My essay about confronting my whale phobia—remember that one?—is finally in print. And oh, look...it's the cover story!

The folks at Open Minds Quarterly are lovely, and I highly encourage sending them your money in exchange for copies of the magazine.

Read more here.

How Do You Poop in the Galapagos Islands?

Darwin’s research transformed the Galapagos Islands into an object of scientific and cultural fascination, as well as a bucket-list destination. In 1978, UNESCO honored the archipelago and its living treasures by naming it the first-ever World Heritage site. 97% of the islands’ area was designated a national park; the remaining 3% was set aside for human habitation. The parklands and their inhabitants are truly wild, offering no shelter, no Internet access, and no bathrooms.

So...How do you poop in the Galapagos Islands?

Click here to read the article on mental_floss.


(excruciatingly cute sea lion pup photo by dagspeak)

More News!

Hooray! Another in National Geographic Daily News! Hooray!

"Birds do it. Bees do it. But genetically modified fruit flies just aren't in the mood."

Read the whole article here.

Huge News!

photo: Alex Blājan via Unsplash

My very first article for National Geographic News was published this week! Please enjoy.

Well, It's Not Poetry, But It Is a Thing, Written Down

Remember the blue whale on the ceiling? I went back. A miniature version of the article I wrote about that visit was published this weekend in the Washington Post. You can read it on page 9 of the magazine, or online here. With luck, I can publish the full-length article soon, too.

The Hits Just Keep On Comin'

More new music from Squid Pro Crow: Volvox Minuet. Words by me; wonderful, wonderful music by Grant.


Volvox Minuet
In one old studio my round instructor
is warming up her knees. Always the knees,
she said. You don't know what you've got
til it's gone. And then the music:
plaintive songs from long-
forgotten instruments.
My hair has slipped
from its braid. My teacher
counts, a hypnotist's trope,
and I am five hundred years ago.
The braid there has slipped too,
but there someone has bent
to mend it.

There is a pond on the way home,
a rich green plate of single-celled forms.
And in there two algae awaken.
A shy current pushes their arms
to preparation. The music begins.

Like new stars we all have been,
so blind to the cosmos and any orbit
but our own.


For more of our music, visit our Bandcamp page.

New Music from Squid Pro Crow

Barnard's Star is reborn! Music by Grant; words by me; ambient sounds from the Voyager Golden Record.



Barnard's Star
I send my heartbeat to you,
and the sum-song of my dreams.
Someday you'll unpack the impulses,
muscle-clicks like cooling cars.
Through endless fields of fire and dust
we send whale song, one noisy kiss.
Bach. A baby's cry.

Every other romance will wane
and waste away. Symphonies
are lost without their listeners.
Even the whale reduces
to a cage of bone and air.
But fast to you, Ophiuchus,
one whispered love is dancing.

For more of our music, visit our Bandcamp page.

Good News, Everyone!

Big news, too: in collaboration with Grant of the Guild of Scientific Troubadours, I've set some of my poetry to music, and may even be dabbling in songwriting. Our first team effort is a spoken-word version of "Watasenia Scintillans Addresses the New Graduates."



Watasenia Scintillans Addresses the New Graduates
She clutches the podium with translucent arms.
She is older than her picture.
She closes her eyes slowly.
We all lean in.
"Life…" she says, tasting each costly letter,

"Life is short. Light your whole self up
every chance you get."



You can download the track over at Bandcamp if you're so inclined. Grant and I (collectively now known as Squid Pro Crow) have all sorts of good stuff in the works, so do stay tuned.

Across the Universe

In a gesture that embodies the spirit of the Voyager project in a very real and wonderful way, Grant from the Guild of Scientific Troubadours has written a song called "Golden Record" in response to my poem "Barnard's Star." I've reprinted the poem below, so you can read it and then go check out the song.

Barnard's Star
after Ann Druyan

I send for you my heartbeat,
the rhythms of my latest dream.
You are just now finding the frozen clicks
of muscles, cooling like just-parked cars.
Through endless fields of fire and dust,
we send whale song, one noisy kiss.

Every other romance
is nothingness now, every whale
a great cage of bone and blue air.
But fast to you, bright Ophiuchus,
one whispered love is dancing.

To the God of Rocks

"Not for man, but for the bee, the moth, and the butterfly, are orchids where they are and what they are."

Neltje Blanchan, from Wild Flowers Worth Knowing, 1917

Then what are we to think
of the hapless geode? Why ever line
the stone’s stomach
with glittering, secret cities? What benign purpose
could these skylines possibly serve?

For a full stone age you sat idly by
as the peacocks bickered
on Olympus. Some glint
of their meddlesome eyes
must have bounced across the clouds.

And your poor geode would have slept--
cozy in his earthen nest—had you
not betrayed him. With a shameless brush
you tarred heartless stars
into his good gray skin.

And now the peacocks’ playthings
pluck your sparkling plum from the dust.
They gather with growing fists. Suspect his shine.
They chant for an answer. Smash him
to shards.



photograph by flickr user EDF Andromeda

The Lovesick Ornithologist Justifies Her Plane Ticket

Iron containing short nerve branches in the upper beak of birds may serve as a magnetometer to measure the vector of the Earth magnetic field (intensity and inclination) and not only as a magnetic compass, which shows the direction of the magnetic field lines. Whether this magnetic map is consulted, strongly depends on the avian species and its current motivation to do so...research has...suggested that magnetic compass and magnetic map sense are based on different mechanisms and are localized at different sites: The magnetic compass resides in the eye, the magnetometer for the magnetic map lies in the beak.
Dr. Gerta Fleissner





So that's it then, lovebird of mine:
our eyes alone won't do it. Point A
to B, I see it, sure,
but won't find my way to it.

I'll fly and fight and never tire
until this ocean's crossed;
but 'til we're mouth
to mouth, my dear, I'll be
as good as lost.



original bird-compass article here.
photograph by Claire

Noctuidae

I. Flame Shoulder

Summer has rolled over
to the damp sheets of August.
The girl with the flame shoulder
starts over, as she must.



II. Heart and Dart

Then one right after another,
he dropped them in the stream:
the flame girl's heart, his broken dart,
and two swift-sinking dreams.



III. True Lover's Knot

In winter, water all is dark
And dreams sleep, muddy, caught;
her bed is cold, his fingers numb
in stiff true lover's knots.




photograph by André Felipe de Medeiros

To the Wizard of Menlo Park

You should know it doesn’t count
If you cheated, and you should know
We know you did. Who but a time traveler
Would sweat until the filament formed;
Who but the one who has known silver dawn
Would bother to burgle one trip
To the moon? There is no sport
To this brilliance. Your fizzing chariot
Awaits in the alley:
Be gone, and leave us our fire.





more on alleged intellectual poacher Thomas Alva Edison here
watch "Le Voyage dans la Lune" here

Barnard's Star

after Ann Druyan

I send for you my heartbeat,
the rhythms of my latest dream.
You are just now finding the frozen clicks
of muscles, cooling like just-parked cars.
Through endless fields of fire and dust,
we send whale song, one noisy kiss.

Every other romance
is nothingness now, every whale
a great cage of bone and blue air.
But fast to you, bright Ophiuchus,
one whispered love is dancing.





More about the Voyager Golden Record here.
Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow, tells her love story here.

Glass: A Love Story

We used to think, in our high-chair years,
in hand-worked gowns and miters,
that windows slid like rain because
their very souls were water.

Now we use the cosmic word,
shapeless itself: amorphous.
If you were in that eleven a.m. classroom
and the test said to define it, you,
sixteen, would know with rock-solid
certainty that amor-phous means "full of love."

Tomorrow we will tip the cup
that holds this estate's mirrors,
and silver and gold and perfect curls
will mingle in the goblet,
the ever-unchanging vessel.





Man-made glass has been around since the at least Bronze Age, and yet chemists and physicists are still at odds over whether it's a liquid or a solid. Some have settled on "amorphous solid." I just love this, this not knowing in the face of millennia of familiarity.

photograph of a shattered Saint Cecilia by Michael Krueger

The First Night of Open Windows: A Census

One lazy-looking spider, possibly
the same one I tossed out the back door
this morning. Two ladybugs.
The fist-sized moth with wings
like the Constitution. He was confounded
when I shut off the kitchen lights.
The refrigerator
would like to be counted.

And then there is me, outlined in light
at the mouth of the closet, hand
to my face in the search
for the right nightshirt
for a night such as this.

Somewhere outside,
a frog calls his children.




photograph by Joanna Blusiewicz

Volvox Minuet

In one old studio my round instructor
is warming up her knees. Always the knees,
she said. You don't know what you've got
til it's gone. And then the music:
plaintive songs from long-
forgotten instruments.
My hair has slipped
from its braid. My teacher
counts, a hypnotist's trope,
and I am five hundred years ago.
The braid there has slipped too,
but there someone has bent
to mend it.

There is a pond on the way home,
a rich green plate of single-celled forms.
And in there two algae awaken.
A shy current pushes their arms
to preparation. The music begins.

Like new stars we all have been,
so blind to the cosmos and any orbit
but our own.




more about the Volvox algae here.