More Leaves from Clive James’s Maple

Physical collapse models
Are badly ailing. Not dead,
But quantum weirdness has them

By the measurement problem’s
Gone probabilistic neck.
Yet, don’t things really collapse,

Truly? Clive James ruefully
Half apologized after
Surviving a few years past

His farewell poem for himself
Apostrophizing himself,
His last chance to see his tree

Shed its leaves. Then again, then
Again. He died, in the end,
Just later than expected.

Cole Harris, Peter Schjeldahl
Seemed acquainted with that tree
As well, elegant old men,

Who, preparing to die, wrote
Fine prose reviewing their end
And then, sheepishly, lived on

A few extra years, surprise,
More than doctors allotted.
This fall, they’ve both gone as well.

Don’t all things, in fact, collapse?
There will always be that camp
Declaring it’s illusion,

But whether you watch maples
Or rigorously confirm
Equations, things go missing.