Street lights back-scatter
particulates from the Stack,
a trough from the tropics,
neighbours’ all-hours WrestleMania,
sleepless in this funk.

CN² and diatomic carbon green on cloud tops.

In the spirit, a Christmas beetle
free-falls Martian-rover style,
impacts the dusty plains of my head.

Image: Woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle, c. 1493.  via Wikimedia Commons. A seasonal quadrille ( 44 word verse) marking the arrival and departure (unobserved by your poet) of the “Christmas” comet.

For those of you who’ve never encountered them, Wikipedia says…

Christmas beetle is a name commonly applied to the Australian and South African beetle genus Anoplognathus. They are known as Christmas beetles because they are abundant in both urban and rural areas close to Christmas… large…noisy and clumsy fliers, similar to the cockchafers of Europe…

And continuing the December playlist here’s the wonderful Django Reinhardt and Stephan Grappelli  with Sultan of Swing.