Category: poetry

Quarks ‘n’ Genes (Some Subatomic, Electronic, and Molecular Musings)

 

 

Interaction between Quarks… Illustration courtesy of flickr.com
[Note: As this is Labor Day Weekend, my brain is taking a holiday from blogging, and I am reaching back into my personal archives for a poem I wrote nearly two decades ago.]

************

I’m trying to fathom this wondrous new world
Of black holes revealed and of wormholes uncurled,
Of hyperspace, cyberspace, space here and there,
Of DNA fingerprints gleaned from a hair.

The pace of discovery moves with such speed,
I’m filled with uncertainty how to proceed;
My questions hang low in the particled air:
In the tenth dimension, just what shall I wear?

If the Internet takes me to places abroad,
Can I get past Ohio on 1200 baud?
Will stop bit and bytes move me well on my way…
Or maybe a megahertz, rented by day?

If matter’s reduced to equations quite neat,
Will philosophers fold up their tents in defeat?
If life is explained by the genetic code,
Are love and free will merely bumps on the road?

I’d rather a vision with chaos and clutter,
A messier cosmos would not make me shudder,
The magic of randomness governed by chance
Leaves more room for wonder…and awe…and romance.

************
Do you find this a fun backward look—or merely dated doggerel? Actually, I think if we’ve learned anything in the past couple of decades, it’s that everything is more complicated than was initially proposed. No worries about putting philosophers out of business any time soon.

And in truth, I’m having a harder time celebrating chaos and clutter and a messier cosmos in 2019, when we seem to be surrounded by an overabundance thereof.

But perhaps (mindfully speaking), that’s even more reason for us to seek out wonder…and awe…and romance!

Enjoy the long weekend. And if you’re reading this in a non-Labor Day country, just enjoy!

Annie

Thoughts Engendered by Pajamas With Feet

NOTE: Gazing at a lovely picture of a friend’s daughter with her two kids–a newborn and a toddler–I found myself advising her, in full cliche: “Enjoy every minute of this time; it goes so fast!” 

That made me wistful about my own daughters’ younger years. Even though I realized then the flight of time, it still slipped past me far too quickly. 

So I dug out a poem I wrote decades ago, which was published in a local anthology. Here ’tis:

We cleaned out the closets yesterday,
Disposing of the children’s Infancy
   and Toddlerhood
in just a few, brief hours.

We stacked the memories in cardboard boxes
and placed them in the basement,
Where they will remain until my charitable 
   heart,
Massaged by the Internal Revenue Service,
Calls the Salvation Army to
take them away.

There went the Winnie-the-Pooh shirt,
Gently folded by the thin ten-year-old
Whose face is hidden now behind a
  thicket of heavy curls,
Like a small cottage attacked by overgrown shrubbery.
“How tiny it is,” she smiles.
How tiny she was, I remember, seeing her again
As she was then, the nicely shaped head
   covered
With thousands of tight little ringlets 
She let me cut at will.

I tried to wring those early years
of all I could,
Taking to heart the wistful warning from those
Who’d already passed this way that
“You’ll never know where the years went.” 

But
Here’s the evidence of my failure, the
Footed pajamas worn first by one daughter,
Then by the other.

In the accordion of my memory, the years are
   pleated 
Close together, almost superimposed
one on the other. I see
The girls, leaning back against their pillows,
Fragile arms folded behind their heads with 
Comical sophistication, as they listen
To a story they both treasured and selected
bedtime after bedtime.
“Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises
everywhere.”

I recite the words from memory now. My six-year-old,
Deciding which books she is ready to surrender to a
Younger child, replaces GOODNIGHT MOON
On the shelf.  I am grateful to her
For allowing us to retain our shared memory just
a little longer.

Next time, I know, GOODNIGHT MOON will go the way 
Of the footed pajamas and the Winnie-the-Pooh shirt.
Another book, which she now reads to me, will mark
these years for us.  My daughters will grow
Less attached to their childhood memories, 
As I grow more so.

I am too young to be living in the past, I think,
But still, in what I know is a gesture more to myself
Than to the future, when the time comes to dispose
of GOODNIGHT MOON,
I shall pack it in the special box, the one set apart
   from 
The goods for the Salvation Army.

There it will join the hand-knit garments woven
With love by aunts and grandmothers intent on
Warming my daughters with their 
crocheted caresses.

And I shall hope that the mildew of indifference
Spares it
For the next generation.

I hope this poem resonates somewhat, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories. WordPress people, if you like it, please remember to click on Like. Cheers!

Annie