"V" from Manhattan Island
       

To investigate the universe, converse with Aristotle,
whose insistence on wholeness misled astronomers
and mathematicians for centuries, or go knock on the door
of poor Copernicus whose heliocentric system shook
the robed ones in Rome to the core. Or have a face to face
(but do not race) with Zeno, so keen on proving continuity
of motion impossible. Be discreet if you should meet
Godel for he'll talk your ear off about the fundamental
incompleteness of any set. Let us not forget Newton,
who may or may not have been snoozing under
an apple tree when he came to understand that attraction
and action operating over a distance is the very stuff
of gravity. Yet, sadly, the mechanics of the universe may
not be mechanical at all. When one examines the very small,
sub-atomic world, abandon all intuition ye who enter there.
Nothing is logical or even predictable though mankind's
curiosity wishes it so, and clings to the notion of certainty.
But to apprehend the intersection of the macro with the
micro, the infinitely large with the infinitesimally small is a job for
someone called to quantum physics, not an occupation either,
but obsession, wonder and disbelief, and requiring an entire
lifetime of surrender to the selfless pursuit of perhaps.
For most of us, there is no way even to imagine Einstein's
space-time, to conceive the warpable weave of the cosmos,
or the duality of light, leaving as a wave arriving as a particle,
the wild world unseen, a Fermion gang of quirky quarks,
a mass of massless bosons, and a sextet of tasteful leptons.
A writhing world we'll never see with our eyes at all
but can only theorize and hope. Only calculated guesses,
tropes followed by dispute and ponderous new guesses.
In science, observation, experiment, careful measurement,
and knowledge only go so far. The rest is imagination.
Here hypothesized branes unite
matter and energy that is actual.
Here space and time
are reconciled as one.
The void no empty place—
it brims with potential energy
so that the nothingness is
itself a source of something
charged. And energy is matter
in another state, throughout time.
For most oF us, the universe
will remain sublime mystery.
We are only defeated
by not using our hearts
as well as our minds.
Time is the fire
(though none conceive the rate of its flow)
in which we all burn.

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Copyright © 2017 Lana Hechtman Ayers All rights reserved
from Four Quarters
Night Rain Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission