0ne recent morning I was riding my bike to work, like ~always. I was heading up rt 79, East Hill, when I looked up and saw some morning sunbeams heading sideways out of a cloud. There was a patch of blue, and I was aware that I was looking beyond the clouds toward stuff I couldn't see. There are stars and planets out there, and knowing that made me aware of how small I am. Then I remembered that I am made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of protons and electrons, which are made of things we don't understand, last I knew*. This made me aware of how huge I am. I thought one of my pet thoughts, that solar systems are stuff moving around stuff, and atoms are stuff moving around stuff, and as such, they resemble each other. I (we) exist somewhere between these two realms. Sometimes I wonder if the solar systems and galaxies out there are substructures of something relatively ginormous that may even be sentient in its own level. That's what fed my poem; I have no reservations about sharing it.
*The electron has a mass, but it is a wave. It is a particle and a wave, and it is made of something like energy-mass, I think. A neutron is kind of like a proton and an electron in one (LOVE! sigh.). The stuff that makes up a proton and a neutron - well, I don't know what it is. It's not completely indivisible, but I shouldn't talk as though nuclear chemistry is something I understand all that well. Mass and energy can interconvert. Isn't that beautiful? I am in awe of everything. And compared to the amt of space a proton takes up, the distance from an atomic nucleus to an electron is huge. And what keeps an atom together? The electrons are moving around the nucleus. There are + charges and - charges, and these are attractive to each other. And there is gravity, which yes, does act at this small scale. But I was told when I took chemistry, that neither the attractive forces of + & - charges, nor gravity
nor the two of them together was enough, as calculated, to hold an atom together. So what is the missing force? I don't know. Magic. (Everything I don't know is magic.
)
well, anyway. That's what fed my poem. That's why I called it Scale. It didn't have anything to do with fish skin, as some seem to have suspected.
And now, for my next poem...
