The distant tether of the 5-Australis
Birkeland Aerostat Array, 5A
for short, was like a boy with 18 balloons,
breath puffing from his mouth in rich volcanic,
locomotive plumes of CO2;
or even like Medusa, snake mouths lunging
into the magnetosphere to sip
a million amps or so like butterflies
alighting on a wild celestial orchid.
[Note in Oct. 2017: One was not aware of Ignatius Donnelly's novel <<Caesar's Column>> when writing this poem; apparently the novel features a city powered by the aurora borealis, so it is on my summer reading list. Certainly one wondered and still wonders if one might possibly have read the novel before, making 5A an example of cryptomnesia, but I don't think that I even heard about it until a year or so ago when I began looking into proto-SF novels more.
