Perhaps
Nels Hanson On ringed Saturn and Jupiter palm-sized diamonds may rain at first. In the Gas Giants’ upper atmospheres high pressure could turn carbon to prized gems, soot particles freed from particles of methane fall past heavy hydrogen and helium toward each planet’s hot core. Ash on its way down squeezed by force condenses to jewels past price on Earth, before fiery centers of the planets melt raining diamonds to crystal seas that might exist on Neptune and Uranus. It depends on fire’s heat, enough methane to change soot into diamonds, diamonds to rain to ocean whose sparkling waves wait an abandoned god’s return, starry finger of an exiled queen. |
About the author:
Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart Prize nominations in 2010, 12, and 2014. His poetry has appeared in Word Riot, Oklahoma Review, Pavilion, and other magazines and two poems have been nominated for 2014 Pushcart Prizes. |