Odes to Science

Earth, moon and Milky Way

 

Ode to Science (part 1)
(Ode to our Lone Earth)

I don’t mean math exactly,
I mean what comes before numbers
for instance, in the way the reflections
on the inside of a bubble
made by a little kid on the street corner
hints the landscape of the global earth,
or how cells divide an unzipped twist of spiral helix
or the geometries of quartz or spectrums of opals
or planets turning lonely in their regular orbits,
are the living stones that  distantly caused
 what makes like porpoises leap from water
migrating in paths no scientist understands yet
or how waves arrive on the beach
falling forward in backward reclusion,
or
what precedes numbers as I look at
raindrop diamonds
hanging in the geometry of spider webs,
or how the topology of honey combs
suggests the logistics of how bees dance
distances to flower’s pollen
--stamens arranged under palace gates
to deposit golden sperm
on the bees hairs.
Oh, what ordered chaos coils in Jupiter’s stormy Red Spot ?

Not numbers, exactly, but what moves and is,
can't measure it with mercury,
but exact lengths of space,
between the edges of living and nonliving.
How you and I came forth from bacteria,
mycelium of fungi,
water dripping, sun on hot soil steaming
developing at long last into
how otters roll coiled in each other’s arms.
I mean sweat in the terrarium,
fiddlehead ferns uncurling,
and green algae on ponds
or chloroplasts and stomata
on the surface of sun soaked leaves.
I mean science without cocky, corporate business suits---
I mean real inquiry, without science done to serve power
without university junk science
done to suit hunters and corporate profiteers,
I mean the colored dust of butterfly wings
bright as aurora borealis, curtains of light
spreading like a multicolored tree across the night sky.
I see dendrite capillaries under the skin of my nose,
dendrites in brain cells, tree branches
and wetlands branching out the Mississippi Delta
I mean,
the same wet passion that holds your flesh to my desire
----the something that pulls tides into tide pools
----the light inside sea anemone’s tentacles
barnacles clutching liver colored sea stack rocks
the eyes of sea lions watching,
the clear lens of the life living
between science, sex and wonder.
 I measure meaning by bird sounds
singing crystals in the evening air:
20 Varied Thrushes singing up in the redwoods,
each with a slightly different note
glass-harp bowls making tones
between music and math
miracles of physical fact
between sound and motion.
Study the sun, study and think about it,
how sunspots dance in flames,
how it radiates our lives,
how this fragile membrane of life is all we have----
Crickets tell the temperature of firefly midnight.
I mean science is not just a method
but a receptivity
a way to listen and smell with eyes
or taste with fingers.
I came forth from the womb and am still trying
to figure out why I have five fingers
and what is the meaning of having eyes.
Even duck billed platypuses have bilateral symmetry.
They have eyes in their mouth
and can see feelingly in the dark.
Imagine seeing with your taste buds.

I watch the lonely truth of starlight
the lonely beat of my own heart
knowing my life is limited and short,
but in the time that is left
the reality of life, earth, this--- this,
this is all that matters:--- to update Blake
”to see galaxies in a grain of sand
and the fragile loss of time in a flower;
to see
how salmon colored sea stars cling to wet mussels   
where whales spout mist over the aboriginal sea.
O, these African dreams I keep having of when my ancestors
were dark skinned persons of the Congo,
following elephant trails through the rain forest
stepping over the fertile Elephant pies
back before human genes
began Migration towards the drawings
of Bears and Rhinos in Chauvet Cave.
Let a science of sympathy blossom now.
I slouch toward no Bethlehem,
but lean slowly towards marmots and ground squirrels
and look for alligator lizards on the back roads
15 years since religion fell out of the sphere of credibility.
how wonderful that science, my first love, came back to embrace me
and still holds my trusting hand,
like a child’s hand
feels like a chrysanthemum in my hand.
Her entire hand holds just one of my fingers.
That smallness is everything.

late autumn, 06

 

 

"Somehow I feel the globe itself, swift, swimming in space."  To a Sunset Breeze  dec. 1890, Whitman,