sara Etgen-Baker Poet Sestina

Notes About The Poem

poem submitted to "1502 Oct. 2026 Part 1" poetry contest, Brian Strand, sponsor, October 1, 2026

Chartreuse Astronomy

The year you left, I studied astronomy,
mapping distances that could not soften regret.
Fireflies stitched the meadow with threads of chartreuse,
while cooling tea darkened inside a chipped teacup.
Far across the valley, someone began to yodel,
and the sound drifted upward through late summer.

I remember that particular summer,
how you spoke of stars as though teaching astronomy
to a child who answered every question with a yodel
of delight. I did not know such joy could ripen into regret.
The moon floated pale beside your forgotten teacup,
and moths circled porchlight halos tinged chartreuse.

Even now, that color, impossible chartreuse,
returns with the first heat of summer.
I find myself reaching for the old teacup,
as if memory were a branch of astronomy,
as if one could chart the orbit of regret
the way sound crosses mountains in a yodel.

At dusk, coyotes answer one another. No yodel,
yet something in their calls recalls that chartreuse
evening when silence first seeded regret.
Crickets kept time beneath the summer
constellations. We spoke lightly of astronomy,
sharing the last cool sip from a single teacup.

For years I kept that faded teacup
on a shelf above my desk. Its painted yodel
of alpine flowers seemed unrelated to astronomy,
yet every petal carried traces of chartreuse
fields and vanished afternoons of summer.
I could never dust it free of regret.

The curious thing about regret
is how it settles into ordinary things: a teacup,
the scent of cut grass during summer,
a song that unexpectedly begins to yodel,
a scrap of ribbon bright as chartreuse,
or a paragraph in a book about astronomy.

ENVOI
What astronomy cannot measure is regret;
it lingers in a teacup long after summer.
One distant yodel still glows chartreuse.

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Joseph P. DiMino October 1, 2026 at 1:48 PM "I remember that particular summer, how you spoke of stars as though teaching astronomy to a child who answered every question with a yodel of delight." -- Wonderful, delightful imagery! "The curious thing about regret is how it settles into ordinary things: a teacup, the scent of cut grass during summer, a song that unexpectedly begins to yodel," -- Marvelous, masterful poetry. Another FAV!