I remembered about the post quite late. About 15 minutes from the deadline. Right: well, then, I'm up for a challenge. Let me write something here.

So basically I write science fiction. I'm a scientist. But also I write fiction.

I often use a trick due to Maugham, regarding minding closely how text sounds.

Appears to be prose, but ... is it?

The wind breaks the waves
and nearer the ground
bends the grass. —
Which also bursts into flames
in the dim starlight,
and the cinders are carried by the wind. —
Like so much snow that is the wrong color.
The grass, however, is fine the next day,
although it had burnt away,
leaving the earth bare and empty.
Meanwhile the wind is there,
every cycle: short day and long night,
and that something else, that odd thing,
which is rather in between. —
And yet it never quite ceases; —
It wears down the faces
of all the large stones
that lay in the valley,
And slowly sharpens things,
like the slopes of the mountains.
This like so much water.
So it's there, everywhere,
as if it were the world sea. —
Which is there, too,
but far in the distance, and undefinable.
Like the taste of food to men who do not eat.
Out there, somewhere out there, yes,
but there where we cannot travel and reach.
(Although it's wholly different,
to start there and later end there.)
The wind, however, is always near.
Meanwhile, the ocean is invisible;
the waves of the ocean are silent.
Rather the wind is visible and loud.
Such is the place where I was born,
— says the Machine.

And three minutes left until the deadline expires.