Sestina Day 42: Hannah, The Universe And Everything

We saw our friend Hannah (not the Hobbit) today for the first time in about 6 years. It was lovely, if brief. One of the reasons it has been so long is that she went off to South Africa to live in a telescope and get a crick in her neck looking at the sky. And giraffes. Another is that she is crap at keeping in touch.
The momentous occasion of our brief reunion occurred, auspiciously enough, on DAY 42 of my self-imposed challenge. This means that today’s sestina ought to contain the answer to life, the universe and everything. Failing that, it’s about Hannah, who probably knows the question. The words came from her.

We always knew that Hannah was bananas
Though she knew all about each asteroid,
When she went out, there’d always be a cloudburst
And hanging out with her was like a circus.
She’d come near death but then emerge, resplendent
Covered in mud and algae from the bog

She’d fallen in. Or having fixed the bog
In someone’s student house, she’d eat bananas
But ask no other payment. Quite resplendent
In boiler suit, plunger in hand, an asteroid
Emblazoned on her shirt, just like a circus
Act: Amazing Hannah! Till a cloudburst

Would send her running. Where we lived, the cloudbursts
Seemed constant, and the park was like a bog
Sometimes there’d be a seedy, muddy circus:
Despondent monkeys nibbling bananas
And Hannah, faster than an asteroid,
Would run to find giraffes, tall and resplendent,

To liberate. But nothing so resplendent
Would come to Sheffield to endure each cloudburst.
So, studying each moon and asteroid,
Reading astronomy when on the bog,
She plotted her escape. We went bananas
When we found out she’d gone to join the circus

(Astronomy’s equivalent of circus)
Gone where the stars are vivid and resplendent,
Where, in the garden, you can grow bananas,
The sky is clear. She’s caught in no more cloudbursts
Looks out over the plateau, not a bog.
And gleefully writes down each asteroid

And supernova. Like an asteroid
She flew so far away. And now the circus
Of all our lives is muddy, like a bog
Without Hannah to come inside, resplendent
But soaking wet, caught in the latest cloudburst:
Reminding us that she is quite bananas.

But from the bog, she saw the asteroids
And went bananas, off to join the circus:
To more resplendent, if infrequent, cloudbursts.