Poetry

His Space and Time Each morning when he wakes he reaches forHis glasses and his watch, his space and time.It’s an old habit, from beyond the shoreThat parts him from that half-forgotten clime.But now he sees at once that he can see,And knows that clocks don’t matter any more.But how he came by this lucidity,This vast yet focused all-aroundness, orThe sweet free hours, the lingering at whimIn this or that caf? or village-why,It’s all a total mystery to him:How these small sunlit clouds throughout the skyAnd those moist fall woods as the colors dimAre now the only scales he measures by.

Frederick Turner

The Observer We’ll never touch the empty space insidethe center of an atom, settle ona singularity, or stand astrideevent horizons”there, but really gone;no common sense can comprehend extremesin mass, velocity, and time. For that,we have to take as proof the chalkboard dreamsof physicists who see the Cheshire cat.But I can hold what numbers can’t depict(good thing, because I’m terrible at math),a sum that calculations can’t predict:the self who walks beside me down this path-who smiles and laughs when I declare, “It’s true,no quantum formula accounts for you.

Robert W. Crawford