In Which The Author Does His Verse...

This last year, I've had an occasional bash at writing poetry. I don't think I'm any good, despite having read quite a bit of it recently (see here, for example; and here). What I - try to - write is science fiction poetry. Because, well, I like science fiction. And it's as fit a subject for poetry as anything else.

So here's one of my meagre efforts...

Observer Effect
As functional and contained as coffins,
ships hang like bats against the void
while captains haggle for air,
for fuel and supplies.
At rest but forever in motion,
they spin about the stars,
painted by the light of other suns.

A beacon flashes,
urgent in the void, as
one ship slips her mooring.
The gentle blown breath of her
manoeuvring thrusters, and she slides
easily and inevitably
from the station's replenishing fold.

With illusory speed, she flees -
there are no visual cues against
the thrown cloth of black, vaster than empires,
and pierced by pinpoint furnaces which stare
unceasingly from the deep heavens.

Abruptly,
she's gone -
in pursuit of otherwheres,
otherwhens;
I can see her destination,
a tiny dot of distant brightness.

I know she will be there much sooner
than the spent light of that remote sun
has taken to reach me.

If I could collect the photons from that distant star
and render the images the quanta encode...

I'd see the past as present:
dinosaurs thundering across a fetid Earth.