[280 COBURN RD]

The quaking aspen, the buried
oil tank, the power-
line, the yarrow;

I’ll meet you
here, just recently
my first purple mallow
bloomed, bundled
by the sun’s marrow.

You left a chair
out there, where teasel’s
taller than
a lumberjack, and on its burr
the lavender ring:

Now it’s time to rise up
and go down
with the hickory
and the handpump,

seasons are on
the march saying,
‘The mud wheel,’ ‘link arms
with us again.’

Energy equals mass times
The speed of light squared
For a thousand years I could not
Figure out what that means
If I had X billion dollars
Could not come up with supersonics
I would not build a collider tunnel
But that’s just me

Last week at the nursing home
We were writing about foxes
Suddenly we were writing about angels
Jim said I think we’re getting off track
Lu said she didn’t
See anything wrong with it

Physicists use metaphors incessantly
Which is to say, use words
The atomic nucleus is like a drop of water
The cyclotron a midcentury office
(Even little pet names for the bombs)
What if they had all just agreed to keep
Quiet about it—
A pact of secrecy—
Nope, no fission here, nothing to see!

But people aren’t like that.
People say that angels fly and foxes run.
And don’t you remember
When Christ was born?
Neither do I
But some people do
It happened in the desert
A fox in the ring
For two thousand years

I was just a little kid
When I had my last good nerve
Irradiated by the math homework
And my dad doing demonstrations
About particles in class
All I could see were purple flowers
Purple flowers and angels flying
Outward from an explosive core

Suddenly we were talking about pressure
(And that was a lot of pressure)
Just like underwater when dad
Was a welder on oil pipelines.
Locked in the diving bell so many times.
And don’t you remember
The lamp underwater, the lavender ring?
I think it’s time to march off
Track with the hickory and the handpump
singing, ‘the light wheel,’ ‘we could not
figure out what this means’