Chemistry Blues

alpine bluebells increase their pH
pink buds become blue flowers

one element away from carbon
boron is not boring

a dead-end scent
if you bruise your whiskey

the chemical connection
between explosives and silk

Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness Explained

Diamond, harder than other
common substances
like copper,

will scratch everything, even
corundum or quartz.
Exponential

scale from nine to ten,
linear from one
to nine—

most minerals, at one
glance, have no
chance.

What the Mind Does to the Body

Bones articulate up the spine
as matching extremities
wink across the axis
of the sagittal plane.

Arrows follow
parabolic pain trajectories
when the body tries to rest.
Limbs fight flexion, extension.

Forced pretzel movements twist
goose-foot tendons behind knees.
Shattered oceans
come through feet.

Cells take up tattoo ink
and cry out for purple cars
with red rims, blue of icebergs
under pressure.

Two chambers of the heart
continue to need oxygen,
as brittle expressions of anger
draw stress lines across breath.

 
Rare Interactions
for my husband

Pine trees grow there,
nearly a mile underground, roots
deeper than ever roots grew.
Buried hope yearns with purpose—
viriditas, greenness, the power
of life—planted amid the search
for cosmic dark matter
and other secrets of the universe.

A nickel mine, the only place
deep enough to detect neutrinos
produced by fusion reactions in the sun,
remote enough for deep contemplation—
the natural root of the mind—the largest
cavern at this depth in the world, where scientists
wear mining suits and helmets with headlamps,
descend with miners in the dark on an open
freight elevator, go even further down
than the pine seedlings, deprive their souls
of divine radiance for a time.

The granitic rock gets warmer
and the air more humid the deeper they go—
good for growing plants rooted
in opposition, for there is no sun
in this underground cave.

But there is light.
Clean, bright whiteness shines
everywhere, behaves like sunlight.

And there is water.
7000 tonnes of ultra-pure water, but not
for plants. That water contains a polished
acrylic vessel enclosed in a geodesic sphere.
It’s stunningly beautiful.

Early on the eve of the summer solstice,
twenty years later, Jupiter is bright, as if
a divine pin pricked the darkening fabric
of the sky to let light from above shine
on those who still search below.

The pine saplings thrive after
being transplanted above ground.
But wood has memory, as well as a soul,
and their roots persist in the depths of the earth,
wonder what riches are yet to be found.

Previously published in So, What Are You Doing To Make the World a Better Place? 100 Thousand Poets for Change Anthology, Kingston, ON Canada, Thee Hellbox Press, 2016; reprinted in Sulphur: Laurentian University’s Literary Journal, vol VII, 2017/18.

* The title phrase, “rare interactions”, describes part of what neutrino physicists study. Some information taken from www.snolab.ca, with permission.
* The 12th-century Benedictine abbess, composer and philosopher Hildegard von Bingen wrote of viriditas as the power of life and is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
* The first pine trees were in the original Sudbury Neutrino Observatory lab (now SNOLAB) in the Vale Creighton mine near Sudbury, Ontario. Work done there resulted in a share of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to Dr. Arthur B. McDonald, the leader of the Canadian scientific team. Occasionally, non-scientists are invited to visit the lab, and there is still a pine tree nursery, where 50,000 red pine and jack pine seedlings are grown and then planted on and around Inco property to fulfill its obligation to reclaim the barren land after years of wear and tear from mining, smelting and refining. Some trees are donated to the City of Sudbury.

Little Forest

boreal mixed forest saplings can be planted
surprisingly close to one another
three per square in a grid of one-metre plots
              Eastern redbud and basswood

no two of the same size side by side
choose from canopy, lower tree layer
understory, shrubs
              sugar maple and tulip tree

dig holes as deep as the root system
dip your thumb in powdered mycelium
rub onto the sides of the root balls
             elderberry and dogwood

add to each hole a handful of mature forest soil
a pinch of asemaa with loving intentions
to nourish the young trees
              red oak and witch hazel

push mulch away from stems
to avoid rot, help the little forest grow tall
return the land to the oldest Elders
               snowberry and sycamore

Note: asemaa, tobacco in Ojibwe

Previously published in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, June 10, 2022.

Numina
for Liz M.

No stories were ever told about the Numina,
practical gods of ancient Rome,
helpers and protectors of families,
who guarded the cradle, presided over
children’s food, dignified everyday life.
**
After miscarriage, residual cells—unseen
microchimerisms—travel the mother’s body
like a relentless spring tide of Numina,
morph into other types of cells, intertwine
with hers in a delicate, familial ballet.

They tell their own stories: how they endure
the low-grade hum of waiting, defend
and fight for the mother’s life, protect
future tiny siblings, offer second chances.
The last quotes the first, looped in love.

Note: Italicized line from Edith Hamilton, Mythology (Mentor Books, 1940), p. 44.

Previously published in Gone Lawn, Issue 41, June 2021.

Capture the Whispers

The vernal pool filled by snow-melt
from moss-covered rocks
reveals slow-acting secrets
to a golden sea of trout lilies.

Mosses are not elevator music;
their patient grandeur
composes complex counterpoint
from simple elements.

Feather-wisps of Goblins’ Gold moss
traverse damp soil,
feed on reflected light from the pool,
on the clouds’ silver lining alone.

Cells gleam in half-dark places
like beads on a necklace;
their interior facets light up,
turning sun into sugar.

Salamanders exit the pool in summer,
their breath streaming;
the forest captures their whispers,
weaves them into moss.

It is so little.

And yet it is enough.

Note: Italicized lines from Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer, copyright © 2003. Reprinted with permission of Oregon State University Press.

Previously published in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, September 11, 2020; reprinted in Spring Peepers: Collection of Canadian Verse 2021 (Beret Days Press, Ontario Poetry Society, 2021).

Expansion

hidden in wing-shadow
wonderful wind of a choir
dust of dark nebulae

Saturn’s moon geysers blast icy droplets
Jupiter as Earth’s sweeper
in the planetary soccer game
its storm may spin only 400 more years
your favorite gas giants visible together

where mountains fold
into former river valleys
frost-churned stones

first landing on the solitary moon
astronauts’ cheeks fell into their eyeballs
so much dust blowing on the surface
they couldn’t tell they were moving
like wind at your back in a snowstorm

so much space and air
waves from marsquakes
lean into the curve

fashion magazines recommend
in uncertain times wear a power suit
wear yours when you come visit
wait for gravity’s slingshot
to send you homeward

primordial solar system spring-fire
expands the ring of spacetime
open space feels too close

Previously published in Consilience, Issue 7, December 2021.

tick more slowly
(with respect for the 2017 Nobel laureates in physics)

binary inspiral                               merging black holes
waveforms       matched templates          chirps
ripples of spacetime                 stretch
compress
change               human hair

suspended mass vibrations     splitting the fringe
shaking                          barely feel
detector sees nothing

brighter and slower                desert
under high vacuum      as the instrument evolves
scatter back in                                          seismic noise
isolation                         from earth
reduction in the shaking

never saw gravitational waves

have to know                 the direction
at room temperature                 quantum noise
radiation pressure
all just hard

stray light          little vertical spikes
all harmless

never saw gravitational waves

the improvement
inspired the dress design        many oscillations
change the shape            those curves
tiny       tiny        tiny
real potential here

merge              within the lifetime
problem                        for the future
normalized     the so-called chirp signal

it had been predicted            before
Galileo looked through a telescope for the first time

Note: Poem consists of found phrases, in sequence, from the lecture “Einstein, Black Holes, and Gravitational Waves”, given by Dr. Barry Barish, 2017 Nobel laureate in Physics, March 5, 2018, Kingston, Ontario.

Previously published in Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association Poetry Contest, Short Form First Place Winner, October 31, 2018; runner-up, 2019 Editor’s Reprint Award, Sequestrum Literature and Art, Issue 23, March 2020.

Creativity, Poetry, Science