Between Sea and Sky
Usually the one you are looking for
lives next door. – Franz Kafka
I live between sea and sky.
Earth, rocks, trees – I know the land
and cherish it, but ocean and space
are strangers to me.
I long to explore the great expanse –
from the far reaches of the cosmos
to the crushing depths of the deep.
But I let science do the searching,
sending a telescope deeper into space
and further back in time than ever
before, diving to find Stone Age relics
on the floor of the Baltic Sea.
Each day, new discoveries.
Meanwhile I take my pleasure
on a slender strip of land somewhere
between sea and sky.
We search, they say, for what is already
within our grasp. For ourselves,
perhaps, or for the great machine
that keeps it all running.
***
Dances with Worms
Scientists woke up a 46,000-year-old roundworm from
Siberian permafrost – Washington Post, July 27, 2023
Awake at last she hurries to give birth –
a new generation of worms, far from home,
a petri dish, not permafrost.
Do roundworms dream? Do they wake
to the mystery of how and when and where?
Do they ponder what happened before,
what comes next?
Hard to expect much from a worm,
but still …
Outside my window this morning
a tiny green worm dangled and bounced
on a filament of cobweb, curling
and uncurling rhythmically.
How mesmerizing its dance, how
enviously I watched – its freedom
of movement, its grace.
Does the drive to dance move the little
being, like the drive to reproduce
moved the ancient roundworm?
The worms aren’t saying, but
never mind. The desire to dance
sleeps within me. In my dreams
I abandon the strictures of age
and gravity. And I dance.
***
The Universe is Humming
Gravitational Waves Create a Constant ‘Hum’
Across the Universe – The Smithsonian, 6/29/23
Listen, the universe is humming.
Last audible rumble of the Big Bang
perhaps? Or the musical contribution
of angels who’ve forgotten the words?
Or, more likely, as scientists suspect,
what happens when supermassive
black holes spiral together to merge.
Whatever. I want to hear the hum,
gauge the frequency, the tone and pitch.
I watch the sky in ignorance, deaf
to the lapping of gravitational waves,
blind to any merger of black holes.
The brain’s a tricky thing – smart
enough to see the possibilities,
too dull to study and explore.
Physics, astronomy, and all the rest –
beyond my grasp, but how alluring.
I dream of equations chalked smartly
on a classroom board – what secrets
they must hold, what treasures
of the intellect they suggest.
Tonight I’ll watch for shooting stars,
treasuring their beauty even if I’ll never
understand the force behind them.
Editors’ note: A slightly different version of “The Universe is Humming,” appeared under the title, “I Dream of Equations,” in Verse-Virtual, January 2024.
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