Filling depressions in the earth...

Personal Puddles

The rain has swirled away

But left a chain of puddles

On the Headlands trail.

They reflect the pewter

Of the scudding clouds;

Their weed-laced edges mimic

Portuguese Beach’s weaving of tossed logs,

A few deep treaded boots leave

Imprints on their border mud.

We call them “The Great Lakes”.

Pulling memory from our slanted,

Wooden, inkwelled desks

We name them:

The biggest, Superior,

Then Michigan, and . . .

And . . .

Mnemonic from Geography – h o m e s!

We christen Huron, Ontario,

And Erie.

Some smaller watery patches

We call the Finger Lakes:

Cayuga’s ponded waters, burnished blue.

There is a pristine string of lakes—

Five Lakes—in the Sierra.

We name another puddle Claire.

These pools all fill depressions

In the earth.

Each one exists in a particular,

A certain scale of size and time.

Those in Mid-America

Are a reminder

Of the glacial ice and geologic time.

The mountain lakes

Recall our younger selves.

The muddy puddles

Are our now,

Our evanescent, vaporizing future.

February 6, 2003

À la recherche du temps perdu

Two little skunks by the roadside sat
As an automobile whizzed by.
It left an odor far from good
And the tears stood in one's eye.
'Oh why do you weep,' asked the other one,
'Why do you sit and quake?'
'Because,' replied the lonely one,
'It smells like  Mother used to make.'

Quoted by Granddad Daus from ~1910

Eucalyptus Tango

Wind, fire and tears were involved in the making of this sculpture.  

A winter wind whipped bark and leaves from the stand of eucalyptus across the road from us onto our porch.  In the spirit of "if you receive a lemon, make lemonade," I constructed two Giacometti-like dancers, dipped them in wax and proceeded with the usual lost wax procedure.  The figures were cut into pieces and mounted on appropriate wax cups. The multiple dips to form a ceramic shell were performed. One dancer had actually been poured and the other was waiting to be burned out. That's the fire.  Wood is harder to burn out than wax, but works just as well in the end.  

The tears came next when a friend, by mistake, began hammering on my unburned piece, thinking it was her poured one.  Mistakes happen.  But her tears were more deeply felt than as a wrong craft step: she had learned that day that her husband had terminal cancer!  The dancer's shell could be fixed, and was.  Her husband died a few months later./ 

The tango is an emotional dance.  The piece is in the way of an emotion-filled memorial to Hans.

Swinging colors around the sun

July 25, 1981

The multiverse in verse

    SEVEN QUESTIONABLE LIMERICKS

1)

A mass-less neutrino named Bill

Went so fast his friends seemed to stand still.

            He sped past each boson

            And zipped past a photon

With “I’ll go faster than light, yes I will!”

2)

A cosmic observer called Mark*

Found 1a’s were a standardized spark,

            So we know space expands

            Quicker than math demands

And we call its strange energy “dark”.

3)

Since the time of the Tories and Whigs,

Since Adam was clad just in figs,

            Laws of church and of state

            Have had no science debate,

For you can’t have a Mass without Higgs.

4)

The math that describes quantum strings

Also seems to explain cosmic things,

            But it needs ten dimensions,

            Which causes some tensions

About “Theory of Everything” flings.

5)

A hip physicist, Brian Greene,

Has us contemplate worlds yet unseen.

            Be it blessing or curse,

            This weird multi-verse

Would multiply both kind and mean.

6)

Does our spacetime grow rounder or flatter?

Do WIMPs make far light bend and scatter?

            Spirals don’t fall apart,

            So we think, as a start,

Seven tenths of our “stuff” is dark matter.

7)

The Standard Model is viewed as an article

Proved by the mass and the charge of each particle.

            Yet it would be better

            And shown to the letter

If supersymmetry found us a sparticle.

*Phillips

 Dec. 26, 2011

Walking through the Valley, a scientist discerns benevolence....

THE GOD TREE 

 Quercus lobata, California Valley Oak

 
 
The God Tree dropped its acorns
In the ancient autumn
For roving bands to gather;
Ohlone women basketed them,
Then pounded them
With sandstone mortars
And leached the tannins out
In flowing waters.
 
The God Tree’s temple
Is a low-railed sacred oval
To protect its privacy.
We stand outside,
In space that’s secular­
Reserved for California’s young
To hear the wisdom
Of poets and scientists.
 
The God Tree arches
Through both space and time.
Its years since saplinghood
Are more than our group’s
Human birthdays added each to each.
It forms a three-crowned Trinity:
Full forty feet of ordinary oak,
A hundred horizontal reach to south
With midway branches
Where it rests upon the ground,
And then another towering crown
Where that huge trunk
Turns upward once again.
 
Our priestess/guide elaborates
Upon its staunch parishioners.
A class of student teens
Once counted species
Within its thrall:
The hawk, the squirrel,
The mustard flower, the native grass,
The lichen and the lizard,
The cricket and the tiny wasp
Which creates pink micro-galls
As nurseries on the underside of leaves.
Two hundred thirteen separate species logged,
If the counters themselves were counted.
 
The God Tree carries
Both its pollen feathers
And its acorn flowers.
The wind insures a fertile source
Of future valley oaks.
The Tree’s soft, bright, photosynthesizing green
Will add another ring this year
To the living layer hid inside
It’s massive trunk.
Sugars surge inside its channels
And water finds its way
From root branches far underground
To trembling leaf tips.
All this before the deep-lobed leaves
Succumb to winter cold.
 
The God Tree
Rules benevolently
And asks no sacrifice
From us.

March 31,   2009