Fusion bestowed life
by Scott Edgar
‘Til your iron heart wrought death
Your ghost is ablaze
This haiku represents the life cycle of a star from its birth through fusion to its death when fusion no longer offsets the pull of its core that’s turned to iron over its life and finally the supernova, its remnant, that results from the star’s instant collapse (if the star was big enough).
This haiku was inspired by this image that I saw of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant:
Further reading:
‘The Life Cycles of Stars: How Supernovae are Formed’, NASA Educator’s Corner, available: https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/educators/lessons/xray_spectra/background-lifecycles.html
Author bio:
Scott Edgar is an attorney and a poet. He has published two collections of poetry (available here) and is the host of the podcast, The Poet (delayed), which is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts here: https://blessed-pine-5317.fireside.fm You can follow Scott on Instagram @poetdelayed.
Read more of Scott’s sciku: ‘Love: Expressed in the General Theory of Relativity’ and ‘The Universe’.