Poetry in a Vacuum

The Seattle Frog Hollow class wrote this poem as a group this spring. Each student wrote one or two lines and I put them in this order. The prompt was a comparison that had to do with outer space. They took that and wrote things like “Stars are bright as bananas” and “Stars are tiny holes in the suffocating tarp of matter and space.” It makes me really happy.

Poetry in a Vacuum

Outer space is like video games.

We thought Pluto was a planet.

Outer space is a vast ocean of nothing.

It is as depressing and lonely as a dark gray fog setting on a wrecked wasteland.

Waves that wash on the ocean beach, waves that shimmer in the sun.

Stars shining like frozen water in the distance.

The planets are like fish in a fish tank.

Planets are like tiny rowboats pulled in an orbital tide.

Black holes like pools of black ink in the sea.

Outer space is an unknown as the ocean.

It’s bigger than that.

Asteroids are like comets and rocks.

The moon is a rock. No food on the moon!

Outer space is a timeless refrigerator at a desolate country grocery store.

The stars are as bright as bananas. Asteroids heavier than the heaviest rocks. Planets floating around like balloons.

The silence of space is like the scream of the lightrail hurtling through the tunnel.

The earth is like a working machine among many dead ones.

Not ever knowing where wormholes will take you, you always have a sense of where they will go.

There is no control in space. It is like being a fly in a spring storm.

Planets in outer space are dim glimmers of hope in human eyes.

The stars are like balls shining yellow and white.

The stars are like sour lemons. The moon looks green in the night sky.

The stars are bright patterns holding unexplored secrets and telling stories of our universe.

The stars are like shells on the beach forming patterns in the sky.

Stars are tiny holes in the suffocating tarp of matter and space.

The stars are the sky.

As impossibly lit as a glowing lightbulb that has just gone out.