after Blue, Orange, Red, 1961, Mark Rothko
Each planet moves around the sun
in curves—foreshortened circles—an ellipse
an iridescent trail saturating my skyline
this ramble of red smudging the night
this baritone of blue penetrating the edges
orange submitting and grounding everything
Rothko assembling a window into my head
Each frame an amplitude of oscillations
an imagined Moiré pattern shimmering
as the contours of each brushstroke fracture
Here—time is unravelled in many sequences
scintillations smearing my eyes for the day
subharmonic voices simmer and clamber on
In this undaunted proliferate composition
I’m searching everywhere for a balustrade
needing to calm myself and close down
resonating hues are piercing—thought
and conversations arrive in reverse order:
in the darkness nebula and comets meld
My words—barely hanging in the air
Alicia Sometimes is a writer and broadcaster. Her poems have been in Best Australian Science Writing, Best Australian Poems, Meanjin, Griffith Review and more. She is director and co-writer of the science-poetry planetarium shows, Elemental and Particle/Wave. Her 2019 TedxUQ talk was about the passion of combining art with science. www.aliciasometimes.com