Arcturus - Emily Dickenson
Atomic Architecture - A.M. Sullivan

About Planck Time
George Bradley

Once upon a time, way back in the infinitesimal
First fraction of a second attending our creation,
A tiny drop containing all of it, all energy
And all its guises, burst upon the scene,
Exploding out of nothing into everything
Virtually instantaneously, the way our thoughts
Leap eagerly to occupy the abhorrent void.
Once, say ten or twenty billion years ago,
In Planck time, in no time at all, the veil
Available to our perceptions was flung out
Over space at such a rate the mere imagination
Cannot keep up, so rapidly the speed of light
Lags miraculously behind, producing a series
Of incongruities that has led our curiosity,
Like Ariadne's thread, through the dim labyrinth
Of our conclusions to the place of our beginning.
In Planck time, everything that is was spread so thin
That all distance is enormous, between each star,
Between subatomic particles, so that we are composed
Almost entirely of emptiness, so that what separates
This world, bright ball floating in its midnight blue,
From the irrefutable logic of no world at all
Has no more substance than the traveler's dream,
So that nothing can be said for certain except
That sometime, call it Planck time, it will all just
Disappear, a parlor trick, a rabbit in its hat,
Will all go up in a flash of light, abracadabra,
An idea that isn't being had anymore.
 

Arcturus
Emily Dickinson

"Arcturus" is his other name -
I'd rather call him "Star."
It's very mean of Science
To go and interfere!

I slew a worm the other day -
A "Savant" passing by
Murmured "Resurgam" - "Centipede"!
"Oh Lord - how frail are we"!

I pull a flower from the woods -
A monster with a glass
Computes the stamens in a breath -
And has her in a "class"!

Whereas I took the Butterfly
Aforetime in my hat -
He sits erect in "Cabinets" -
The Clover bells forgot.

What once was "Heaven"
Is "Zenith" now -
Where I proposed to go
When time's brief masquerade was done
Is mapped and charted too.

What if the poles should frisk about
And stand upon their heads!
I hope I'm ready for "the worst" -
Whatever prank betides!

Perhaps the "Kingdom of Heaven's" changed -
I hope the "Children" there
Won't be "new fashioned" when I come -
And laugh at me - and stare -

I hope the Father in the skies
Will lift his little girl -
Old fashioned - naughty - everything -
Over the stile of "Pearl."
 

Atomic Architecture
A.M. Sullivan

Take carbon for example then
What shapely towers it constructs
To house the hopes of men!
What symbols it creates
For power and beauty in the world
Of patterned ring and hexagon -
Building ten thousand things
Of earth and air and water!
Pride searches in the flues of earth
For the diamond and its furious sun,
Love holds its palms before the glow
Of anthracite and purrs.
Five senses take their fill
Of raiment, rainbows and perfumes,
Of sweetness and of monstrous pain.

If life begins in carbon's dancing atoms
Moving in quadrilles of light
To the music of pure numbers,
Death is the stately measure
Of Time made plausible
By carbon's slow procession
Out of the shifting structure
Of crumbling flesh and bone.

BACK TO HOME PAGE