The Bortle Scale, from One to Four I think I’ve never seen the Milky Way, I said—at least, not registered it as such— for many years had churned since I’d not known that earthly lights would cancel out the stars and blanch stark blackness into tinted greys that mock the glistening fractured tears which mighty giants weep and beam to us in mourning for their snuffed-out spectral kin. Acknowledging their house amid the hills, set far from towns and screened from neighbours’ homesteads, crouching mute beneath the moonless sky, was blighting night’s eternal darkest blackness, blazing out its own illumination which, with a finger’s flick he might extinguish; and, learning of my longing to gaze further, he quenched the lights to outside space for me. The porch and drive and field and further workshop, the bend, the private road, and flanking trees sunk down to formless shadows while the vault of heaven permeated my tired eyes… Yet, where’s the Milky Way? I had to ask. Look up, above your head. Yes, she was there but faint, like long-lost memories of love or soaked-in, blotted, spilled ambrosia. My sister and his wife were still inside not drawn to stepping into chill and dark— perhaps not knowing quite why we were out, or even that we’d left. Their lights were on so, even near the bend, they teased our sky and sapped the Bortle scale. I’d not the cheek to ask, invite them to join in. That other star, he said, I think’s a satellite. Paul Rapley, 2025
Sorry this is late - done in a rush
Thanks, Alan, for setting the challenge.
#poemsabout #DarkSky @alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky
![darkness, light, passion
For shame! For shame! Lock up the mad cat!
Red. Pink. Crimson. Mahogany.
No jail was ever more secure.
Rain beating, wind howling, fireplace blank
violent tyrannies, proud indifference, plain aversion
darkening deposits in my mind’s turbid well
courage sinking cold into the coming night…
Outside, a swift-darting beam, unrecognised [from the burning oil of a whale, perhaps]
the herald of some coming vision from another world
head hot, heart thick, the rushing of wings in my ears
in terror i hear my cry…
there was a stranger in the room
soothing conviction of protection and security
more tenderly than ever before, i felt raised, upheld
before the warm fire and a friendly flame [from the combusting fat of sheep, no doubt]
before he went out, and then the fire and the flame
A loud bell ringing
in bitter cold the girls up and dressing
evincing fortitude under wintry privation
night irked out by feeble glimmers [from the ignited pith of grease-dipped rushes, for sure]
water frozen in the pitchers
i let down the window and look out
behind us, the town
to judge by the number of its lights [from volatile components of coal, distributed, in main]
a place of considerable magnitude](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2ugcsqyptxe35rvxhyom3udo/bafkreif4hmdej6k6bwh22udobir34y625mzxik7g465lvhvzvwzhz6ul7y)
