Science is built of facts

As science is built out of facts,
worldviews are made of truths

not all of them,
nor them alone.

In the world, my eyes and ears
collect glints and creaks from the world
as it was when it shed those photons and vibrations;

      my brain collates that data, and makes a collage
      to show me the world as it may well be
      when I shift myself to speak


or to catch a ball (to catch a ball
I put my hands where it will be).

Seeing only the future,
tomorrow is a mystery.

Tomorrow will be much like today
and today is a mystery: what lies behind
the skin shed in glimpses of creepy-crawlies and

      tomorrow will surprise no less than today
      for the world, no less than science,
      was made by the unworldly

A mathematical poem

                   12 = 3 × 4

                   56 = 7 × 8

            0 + 12 = 3 × 4

            5 + 67 = 8 × 9

Hairku

I feel like dusting
but there is no dust. There is
fluff enough though, so...

High Q

Intense she came round
and hence he has found IMMENSE
her background absence.

*

*   By dew bejewelled,
ruby tulip beautified
... soon it putrefied.

Haikoo

  A moo oozes out
of a cow's mouth, in a fog
             that is not too odd.

Where have you been?

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.

That's from Shelley’s Adonais, 1821.

Duck-poo Soup

On a green pond smooth as glass,
mallards float and pass
the time. I stare
and look away. Splashes
make me turn to see water plumes
collapsing. A pause, a floating
feather: I think of water's plumage
and up spring some ducklings, as
busy as bees in the water-lilies.

A lardy male waddles by
on lobstrous feet, evoking
with his draconian head
a Viking long boat.
A duckling ducks
submerges and emerges
like a broadside
at the adult's broad side
and nippily snatches a fly
from the bottom of the sky.
Flustered, the adult flaps
his wings, flinging off
oddly fluttering splodges. Weary of malarkey,
he fans out his butt like a pack of cards
and onto a flagstone flops. Wary of malady,
he gingerly stretches out
his white-collared neck
for soggy croutons floating
on this duck-poo soup. He wants
that sumptuous bread but he fears
being presumptuous. He does not want
to end up dead. But he cannot die.
He is a picture. I have immortalized
and immobilized him.

Unhinging winds fringe maroon-fingered moon,
like a waiter with a supernatural soup-spoon;
a crater of rubble like a burst bubble serving
as a seat of tranquillity for a duck quacking up
a soporific melody of sounds pacific:

Talk about a duck
floating on a lake,
looking like a wooden decoy does;
talk about a drake
ducking wooden ducks,
making all the ducklings he can make.

Sussuration Song

.......Will shining shingle sing of God?

.............Dark incarnate hearts
pump hard, as rooks heave at dusk,
.............wing-beats glistening.
.......Clouds that shroud heaven
.......hang over shadowless dusk,
..............starkly reddening.

..............Robin’s orange bust
..............bobs a little rustily
..............in a sudden gust.
Robin Redbreast drops dead, poor thing, for
it’s night, and the slimy shingle stinks of cod.
..............“In your sight all is light
..............for ignitable spite,
for recursive respites see your fighters rehearse,
as your terse universe irreversibly worsens,,

.............Rudely tulips bloom,
petals plumped round jumbling genes,
bumped by bumbling bees. Two twirling butterflies
climb a double helix. I’m a double helix
.......whose whirling wonder dies. Sparks
...............swirling upwards flash
.......into ash-flakes (“Your words dye into
paper,,) as wounding winds use weaving waves
........to bury bones in gruesome graves:
................Robin’s flotsam grotto.
................To deliberate is to delete options.
........................On other shores the sea snores
........................as the waves break, saying
......................................................“je suis... Je suis...,,
Ruddy flesh haloed,
but pebble-strewn puddle owns,
................muddy cherry stones

........and so there will be cherry blossom

Where have you been?

Said the straight man, to the late man,
Where have you been?
I've been here, and I've been there,
And I've been in between.

I talk to the wind,
My words are all carried away,
I talk to the wind,
The wind does not hear,
The wind cannot hear.

That's how "I Talk To The Wind" begins, 1968

Limerick

There once was a man from Limerick
Who got, in his weakest limb, a wrick;
His eyes filled with glints
As he spied, of splints
Split from a tree's limb, a rick.

Form is the diagram of forces

                       Dark incarnate hearts
pump hard as rooks heave at dusk,
wing-beats glistening.

Haiku; by who?

......Yellow butterfly
fluttering—fluttering on
......over the ocean.

The best haiku ever (at least in translation)—I read it years ago and cannot now recall who wrote it (and Google was unusually unenlightening); does anyone out here know?

April is cruel

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

Dylan Thomas, 1933

Whither do they wither?

Out in the dark over the snow
The fallow fawns invisible go
With the fallow doe;
And the winds blow
Fast as the stars are slow.

That was written in 1916 by Edward Thomas, just months before his death.

Resistance is Futile

If you think the world is a clutter of existence
Falling through the air with minimal resistance
You could be right, how would I know?
Colossal youth is showing the way to go

That's the end of the title track of Colossal Youth, 1980

The Mind's "I"

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and you—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—

Emily Dickinson 1862/3

Cat Food

Titmice on tarmac;
on a blackboard the chalk says:
.....................Liquorice Allsorts
.

Science is built of facts

and so is skepticism

It is cloudy. Trillions of droplets float in the shade of lighter droplets,
getting heavier, and heavier. Eventually they rain down. These clouds
shrink, and as the sun breaks through, they frown:

Sunlight enters the raindrops, refracting as it does so, and on reaching
the other side of each drop, is reflected. It refracts again as it leaves the
drops. Eventually it enters my eyes. I see a rainbow.

Under that gloomy sky, the green of the sunlit trees stands out. It seems
to be where the green trees are, but I know that the green is in my mind,
where the green of the rainbow is. What of the trees?

There they are, bright green. I put that green out there, and so I wonder,
did I put the trees there? Is this a dream? I take this world seriously but
I take my nightmares seriously when I am having one.

After all...

Soft-as-moths moggy
on moth-eaten sofa curled
to mothball her world.
.