Review of the Sky at Night
—
An uneven performance with some gripping parts:
Orion a definite success, just a pity the belt
is used only once; but then there is Hydra,
a random line of faint stars with no oomph at all.

The Milky Way really needs more volume,
we can’t all visit a desert for its full effect,
just dial it up a little for we city types,
and remove some astrology duds like Pisces.

The arrangement of Venus, Jupiter, Crescent Moon,
was a bit of a triumph, more conjunctions please,
and more often: waiting some twenty years
strains the patience of your audience. And brighter comets.

As for the Northern Lights – very fetching indeed,
but what a waste keeping them so far north
where hardly anyone lives. Try them in London,
say every few weeks, and vary the colours more.

Ruth Aylett lives and works in Edinburgh and has been known to attend readings with a robot. Her poems are widely published in magazines and anthologies, and her pamphlets Pretty in Pink (4Word) and Queen of Infinite Space (Maytree) were published in 2021.