Of the Vowels in the Brain

They have their place settings
Even when they don’t have
Letters, just a blurry

Intersection among
The many synapses.
The shapes a mouth can take.

The calls a throat can make.
One calls back to itself
In the population

That grew up using it,
And cries out to others
In other company.

A little opening
With a home in thinking.

This Belonged to Someone

You stumble across one lying
On the walk, blown down like many
Are blown down by the threshing wind.

You curse, as anyone stumbling
Might curse in surprise, but you don’t
Really resent the obstacle.

It fascinates you. It’s too bad
There’s no one to tell about it,
To discuss it at the moment.

There it is, looking bruised, looking
Indistinguishable from all
Its fellows scattered by the wind,

Except that this one’s in your way,
Long, black line with nothing to say.

Gods and Numbers

Creation or discovery?
A mathematician muses.
It does feel like discovery.

Surely, if it were creation
It would be easier. Sometimes
You so want something to be true,

But you can’t make it so—it won’t
Agree with you. In creation
You could make it what you wanted.

Oh, could you now? mutters the great
Creator. You really think this
Is what I wanted, what exists

For you to enjoy creating?
Discovering, if you insist.

Big Ring and Giant Arc

Not just divisible,
Expandable, the waves
And the shapes that they make.

Every time the smallest
Unit is established,
Something smaller is found.

Every time the largest
Structure is established,
Something larger is found.

The cosmological
Principle held smoothness
Obtained past galaxies,

Summing galaxies, but,
No, there are vaster shapes,
Arcs and corkscrews stringing

Whole swarms of galaxies
Spun into filaments
Swirled like cotton candy.

Don’t bet on those being
The biggest, don’t bet on
Subatoms as smallest.

Temptation

Stone House did live alone
For years in his cottage
By the overlook rock,

Tending his own garden,
Hauling his own water,
Mending his own worn robes,

And most surviving lines
Of his poetry stem
From those impoverished years,

But Yeats never did go
To Innisfree, never
Lived in the bee-loud glade.

It’s tempting to wonder
What his poems would have been,
If he’d dared the attempt.