Taking Soundings

Rachael Clyne

Our fiery ringmaster Sol, rumbles and purrs. 
He erupts with flares and whips us all into place.

Shell-shocked Mercury, cratered as the Somme,
explodes in rage at being flung so near the sun.

Like the hollow clang of a sunken ship’s bell, 
Venus tolls a knell with hammered-brass glare.

Earth hums with activity. Dark buzz beneath placid blue. 
Her offspring has gone rogue, deaf to the hazard it wreaks.  

Mars is all wind and echo. He takes soundings, 
but cannot summon his waters back to life.

Jupiter is a gong-bath, a tympany of Sturm und Drang, 
a swirl of gaseous rush, a frenzy of directions.

Saturn hurls rings of sound to ice-shatter in interstellar space. 
He screams and screams for someone to hear.

A stuck record, Uranus is caught in a loop 
of shush and sloosh; a supersonic wind rush.

Slumbering Neptune breathes slow and deep, slips
between alpha and delta, but keeps his dreams to himself.

From the furthest edge, Pluto sends a pure carillon of peals, 
defeats size and distance to make his presence felt.

The Science

‘Taking Soundings’ is a poetic description of signals emitted by the solar system planets as recorded from space. NASA captured radio emissions of the planets, their scientists converted these recordings into sound waves. The resulting sounds caught my imagination.

The Poet

Rachael Clyne from Glastonbury is a psychotherapist, who has published two self-help books. Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies and she is a popular reader at poetry events. Her prizewinning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams), concerns our relationship with the wild and her pamphlet, Girl Golem (4Word Press) is about her migrant background and sense of otherness.

Next poem: We and I by Tamara Yunike