Welcome to dVerse, fellow poets! Tonight, let’s get elementary. Let’s get back to the absolute basics of matter.

For Christmas this year, my son received a copy of Periodic Tales by Hugh Aldersley-Williams. It’s a book of stories about the different elements of the periodic table. I thought it might be fun to write some poems inspired by elements, and that’s what I want you to do tonight. You don’t need to have any knowledge of science to do this – we rub up against the elements every day.

When you stop and think about it, you realise there are so many elements surrounding us all the time. Maybe you’ll write about gold – the ultimate treasure? Or carbon, present in charcoal, coal, but also in diamonds? Maybe oxygen? Maybe you’ll fill a balloon with helium and let it go bobbing off; or give me a poem that’s a neon light in a dark night. Or maybe you’ll head off down into the lower layers of the table where the stranger elements like uranium and polonium lurk.

Just to remind you of the wonderful, varied world of the periodic table, I’ve added a copy of it.

And here’s a link to the Royal Society of Chemistry‘s interactive version.

And here are a couple of very different poems inspired by two very different elements:

Oxygen – by Mary Oliver

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

And

Silver

 

Slowly, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon;

This way, and that, she peers, and sees

Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;

Couched in his kennel, like a log,

With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep

Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;

A harvest mouse goes scampering by,

With silver claws and a silver eye;

And moveless fish in the water gleam,

By silver reeds in a silver stream.

 

Walter de la Mare

 

See? It doesn’t have to be scientific…

Once you’ve written your poem, connect it up to Mr Linky, and then make your way round our poetic periodic table. Please don’t forget to add a link to this post in your own post. It helps expand the dVerse world, and expand your readership.

Thanks for joining in!