Fission
Levels live in atoms just
As much as atoms live
In different ways in us.
Nature in its lust to give
Us rain and sun and rust
Takes these tiny worlds,
These basic bits of dust,
And grows us earth and pearls.
Mindless bits of matter move
Inside us, climbing ladders rung
By rung, as if you could improve
On things so cavalierly flung.
All things in nature dance around
Like protons in an atom,
Seas evolve to bits of ground,
Dirt roads to macadam,
Solar systems burst in full from suns,
As dust storms come from specks,
Supernovas from a boson spun,
And cities out of wrecks:
Things flamboyant out of shreds,
Airplanes out of paper toys,
Labyrinths from simple threads,
And whole worlds from the cosmic noise.
July 8th, 2022
March 2nd, 2023
Kaiholu
Explanation
Maybe this is metonymy gone mad: the whole suggested by the part, the cosmos evolved from atoms. As Hamlet says, nothing ever dies: matter is simply rearranged. What is created is here forever, long after the earth will have been aspirated into the sun. Whether or not the cosmos is expanding, its deeper mechanics suggest that the celestial intelligence is nostalgic, even feeling.
Hamlet theorizes that when Caesar dies his dust eventually finds its way into a cork that plugs a wine barrel, so that:
Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
A small recent discovery suggests that matter is mutable. That is, matter can be moved by lasers. For the moment, it’s a matter of only meters. But, as Mao said, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
Lasers move particles by photophoresis. Tesla coils move things by teslaphoresis. These are also called tractor beams, or Bessel beams, which pull objects like tractors, rather than pushing them.
Particles heated by lasers become excited and thus more mobile. Matter can also be moved by sound waves. So sound waves have a lot in common with optical (laser) waves, and with solenoid (magnetic) beams.
Jacuzzi jets use air to move particles, but the reaction is similar to using optical (laser) waves.
Gravity, magnetism, the solar wind, death, sound, sight, and our own gastrointestinal system keep matters constantly in motion, from the smallest bits to the largest. Atoms change levels in fission, which can produce the energy of an atom bomb.
But particles can also move across the universe instantly due to quantum energy exchange (see my poem “Trade Winds” in this volume), transported by a multi-universe electrical grid which preexists the cosmos.
These scientific facts are abstract and hard to fathom; I’ve tried to make them clearer in the poem “Fission.”
By throwing around paper airplanes, Richard Feynman eventually rethought the laws of physics, for which he received the Nobel Prize. So thought exhibits the same mutations that matter does, and poems are one arm of that telekinesis. A poem is thus a kind of laser beam which can cause turbulence in brain matter and change our minds by an alchemy which is a genuine quantum phenomenon, lending gravity to what we think of as a metaphysical conceit.
Turns of phrase thus have a significant reality behind them. Like Uri Geller, our minds can move objects, not to mention other minds.
This is a roundabout way of saying “Don’t turn your back on poetry. It’s like the ocean.”