When you told Anna you’d take your own life

Unless she married you, was it an act?

Your method, though pathetic, worked: your wife

She soon became, despite one little fact

Which some folks thought was worthy of respect:

You had a wife, and had for fourteen years!

The Russian Academy declared, “Reject,”

Due to appearances, so it appears.

But you saw patterns no one else could see;

And if your private life was, well, unstable,

You wowed the world when you predicted three

New elements with your “periodic table.”

And though it sounds like something of a spoof,

You are the reason vodka’s 80 proof.

(Courtesy of America Star Books)

Earth, water, air, and fire: each had its home

To which things out of place tend to return;

And fire dwelt beyond the airy dome,

So where but up should earthly fires burn?

Around the wat’ry sphere’s the airy ball,

So air bubbles in water have to rise;

And objects, being earth, to Earth must fall

(Which scarcely seems an ungrounded surmise).

The ancients’ “wand’ring stars” turned out to be

Among our planets, but their elements

In our periodic table we don’t see;

Eventually their science made no sense.

And yet when lightning strikes, I swear I love

To think it’s fire leaking from above.

(Courtesy of America Star Books)