Friday, September 10, 2010

Poem with Radiometer


Four vanes pierced by a spindle,
a cotillion in black and white.
Moving in atmosphere lighter than air,
one searches out the other moving away.

As inside the glass, outside. You move slowly
through me, and light bounces from one skin
to the other, a kind of feint. To kick at the shadows
becomes a function of how we breathe.

But what muscles the endless spin?
Dark hides from light as light pursues it.
You knuckle your eyes in disbelief, saying it’s dangerous
to stand this close to such a rapidly rotating truth.

If this was an experiment, it could be extrapolated
to metaphor. We think: it takes opacity to capture light.
We think: if only the clouds did not erase the sun,
we could quantify forever.

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