Poetry and science 4 – Bedrock

Bedrock

At the window, light bounces
off me, journeys to glass.
Most passes through this solid pane,
tunnels away into night.

You can’t predict which photons
will reflect. There is only probability.
The five percent I see looking back
ghost the window with the shell of my face.

Our bedrock is not rock at all
but shifting sands, particles that slip
in and out of space, find themselves
in different places at the same time.

I think how no-one is ever truly seen,
how what we know is a surface
of a surface of a surface.

Karen Dennison

First published in 14 Magazine

Poetry and science 3 – imagine chasing a beam of light

Imagine chasing a beam of light

Imagine life as an impression
in four dimensions where time
is space, where an image
of each moment is held
forever in its place.

Imagine the traces each person
would make, human-shaped
hollows, tunnels that meet
and split and stop; and never fade.

Imagine the sky embroidered
with bird-shaped loops,
each fanning of each wing caught;
the sun a pulsing streamer
of endless figures of eight.

Karen Dennison

First published in Popshot and also in Shoreline of Infinity.

Featured image by Anthony Ayiomamitis from http://solar-center.stanford.edu/art/analemma.html