String Theory
(Christine Klocek-Lim)
The mind makes pieces of things:
string theory, evolution,
the unpredictable way a treefalls under lightning.
And I have observed the world
slow before surgery,
seen how even motes of dust
become important in a hospital.
But there is solace in the ordinary.
The universe is littered with stars
and mass. Every night the earth
falls into dark.
And I don’t want the day to pass stuttered
with spilled tea, indecisive steps.
The bewildering routine we follow
sends us to bed tired and lost,
frightened of the looming storm
that threatens trees in the front yard.
The physics of living tangles the common,
like the stuff I’ve jammed
in the kitchen drawer and forgotten,
where there is another universe
filled with old rubber bands,
defunct batteries, and cotton
cord wound into a ball.
But these are not broken items
where a string loops closed.
No. The batteries passed
their energy to a flashlight.
The rubber bands defy gravity,
hold together notes written
in the hospital, in another world
where words controlled the way
our son survived.
Years have passed since then
but the paper says the same thing:
11 am, check the iv for air bubbles.
Amazing how the invisible can explode
a vein, how words written can shift time
from past to present.
It’s all relative.
Many strings compact to one
when the universe shrinks into a dot.
The mother of a sick child knows this forever.
When I clean out the drawer, I find
the string’s end has frayed into ten strands,
which themselves can be unwound
into twenty-six. Another choice looms
but I’m out of time and loop the string
around the notes. It’ll hold for a while.
The past is bound to the mind
in pieces that strike like lightning
despite the storm’s end,
despite the way evolution
changes even dust.
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