Two Poems by Lara Dolphin

 

“Marie Curie in Easton”

 

Whether the children were enjoying the space, she had little doubt.

Still, she felt a curious dread as she wandered the museum,

filled with posters, screens and virtual spaces.

It all seemed so busy, so frivolous.

 

She recalled with fondness her humble shed, not a proper laboratory to be sure,

hot in summer, drafty in winter, leaky when it rained,

but suited to the tasks of a curious mind,

quiet and full of possibility.

 

What she wouldn’t give to be back in the Warsaw of her childhood

at her beloved Flying University studying in secret

simply for the love of learning. “If simplicity is the sign of truth,”

she wondered looking around, “where had it flown?”

 

Out of the side of her eye she spied a show set in a picture frame

hanging by itself in a corner playing to no one, the dulcet tones of a minister’s voice

explaining how crayons are made. She watched mesmerized as hot wax, hardener and

pigment popped up into handfuls of bright yellow sticks.

 

Could it be that it is the noise of the past that shames us;

the present requiring nothing more than our faith? This moment,

she thought, rolling a crayon in her palm as she once rolled

a slender cylinder of radium, is volatile, violable waiting to be discovered.

 

“Linus Pauling in Schnecksville”

 

After a long day of toying with the quantum mechanics

of chemical bonding, nothing hit the spot quite like

fresh-made ice cream, so Linus put on his beret

and set out for Crystal Spring dairy.

 

Past baseball fields and playgrounds

past the community college and the diner

the elementary school, the fire hall, the post office, and the bank,

past the bison grazing on game preserve lands

 

He did not call at the parsonage, though he knew

the minister would be at home, nor at the Grange,

the hardware store, or the IGA. He slowed as he passed

the cemetery by the church but kept on going.

 

When he got to the farm, he ordered a cone, the perfect emulsion--

milk, cream and sugar overrun with air and whipped into a dense, cold foam

that when consumed too quickly constricted then warmed the blood vessels, sending

signals of pain along the trigeminal nerve.

 

As he stood by the fence looking at the wide open acres

where wind would blow snow into wild, white dunes come winter,

he thought, “The best way to have a lot of ideas,”

“was to give the mind plenty of space.”

 

Just then a Maltese cat jumped onto his shoulder

snapping him out of his reverie. He was sure that vanilla

was the best flavour but headed back inside to get a second cone

this time a chocolate to account for subjective error.

 

Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife and mom of four amazing kids; she is exhausted and elated most of the time.