What’s It All
About, Albert?
Let us talk of
fundamentals,
chew the fat on
flawed reality,
two caffeine
fuelled organisms
questioning
existence.
Let’s pretend that
we are fixtures
and not dodgy
synapse constructs,
scribbling madly
through the hours
like we feel
there’s no tomorrow.
Here I pitch verse
at the universe,
seek antidotes to
entropy,
focus following
the threads
in the patchwork
that is spacetime,
while you look for
truth in chalkings
of bold metaphors
on blackboards,
channel Newton’s
classic genius,
contemplating this
and that.
In truth, it’s
madly tangled
like some tale of
autumn messiness
but I’d like to
know the answer:
just what is it
all about,
Albert?
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
(after Albert Einstein,
Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr)
On the Midnight
Relativity Sleeper Express,
central coach E by the buffet
carriage,
window seat facing the
direction of travel,
Werner Heisenberg
found his reservation.
Rucksack stashed
away in the rack,
laser
flashlight by his avocado sandwich
on the table with
his takeaway latte,
his body distorted
unnoticed, as time slowed with the train’s acceleration.
Approaching the
speed of light,
Heisenberg prepared to flash his torch
through the window at his
friend Niels in the station,
patiently waiting,
ready to wave from behind the yellow platform line.
Haplessly however,
Heisenberg hesitated,
distracted
for a moment, unable to pinpoint
the anachronism in his
thought experiment.
He hoped he’d
flashed at the right time for his stationary friend …
but he couldn’t be
absolutely certain.
Towards a Theory of Everything
… or Quoth the
Raven (after Edgar Allan Poe)
Heisenberg, Planck
and Einstein,
Penrose, Hawking,
Higgs and Bohr:
physicists in
search of knowledge;
wizards steeped in
cosmic lore.
Charm the quark
and spin the boson.
Watch the universe
inflate.
Search for meaning
in a raven
perched upon a
wrought iron gate.
Questions seeking
many answers:
postulate the
parallel.
Magic sought in
multiverses:
ride a broomstick,
cast a spell.
Heisenberg, Planck
and Einstein,
Penrose, Hawking,
Higgs and Bohr:
physicists in
search of knowledge;
wizards steeped in
cosmic lore.
Track the paths of
ghost neutrinos,
tie a black hole
up with string,
eye of newt in
cauldron bubble,
join the laws of
everything.
Time’s illusion,
now means nothing.
Search for answers
evermore.
Overhead the
corvid follows:
‘Quoth the Raven
“Nevermore”.’
Heisenberg, Planck
and Einstein,
Penrose, Hawking,
Higgs and Bohr:
physicists in
search of knowledge;
wizards steeped in
cosmic lore.
Clearance
In the wreckage of
a house clearance,
a face distorts in
a fractured glass eye.
Painted on gesso
and northern white pine,
old acrylic
eyelashes flash a recognition.
Stippled like a
stormy summer,
worn and battered
flanks shiver in the dust.
A torn rosette
from a forgotten fete
hangs by a mane,
shabby and faded.
Familiar sounds
echo in the room:
the rhythmic
squeak of tarnished swing irons,
the abandoned joy
of a child’s laughter,
urging speed with
giddying shrieks.
Memories locked in
beautifully flawed wood,
as fingers trace
words etched in brass,
re-joining a
father’s name at the base of a gift,
sold and lost in
the dying days of January;
the forty year
provenance of a final project
documented in a
set of saddlebag Polaroids.
Drifting
Light seeps
through cracked lashes.
The
new day’s tide sweeps a winter beach,
debris left on rippled sand
forms
a room of furniture
in a head weighed
with questions.
Out of frozen
vaults of memory,
a
canvas dragged into the morning sun
thaws slowly,
mixed colour through frost
leaching
out in blurred patches
on old bones in a
strange bed.
Who owns these
shoes on the floor,
the
clothes laid over the chair?
Where has this
body washed up,
dreams
dissolving in net curtains
with each
successive blink?
Untethered
thoughts escape.
Faded
pages, ripped from random chapters
of unfamiliar books,
float
from shelves where a life story
drifts as lost
flotsam.
Water ebbs from
confused spaces,
muddle
and recognition in a mismatch:
a struggle with
half-remembered faces,
the
salty dampness of the beach,
a name that will
not come,
a stranger’s shoes
by the bed,
cold
waves breaking over the room,
someone’s clothes
on the chair,
the
sound of anxious breathing
and the backbeat
of a pulse.
Jonathan Humble is
a retired deputy headteacher who lives in Cumbria and works part-time at Kendal
Library. His poems have appeared in a number of anthologies and other
publications including Curlew Calling (Numenius Press), Diversifly (Fair Acre
Press), This Place I Know (Handstand Press), Greenfields (Maytree Press) and
Through The Locking Glass (Inspired By Lakeland). A short collection of his
work (Fledge) was published by Maytree Press in 2020. He has had poems for
children shortlisted and highly commended in the Caterpillar Poetry Prize and
York Mix Poetry Competitions. He edits The Dirigible Balloon website showcasing
poetry for children and has edited the anthology Chasing Clouds: Adventures in
a Poetry Balloon published by Yorkshire Times Publishing. He writes regularly
for the Yorkshire Times, reviewing poetry collections and publishing articles
on a range of subjects. He delivers poetry workshops for Wordsworth Grasmere
and also appeared as the Poet in a Fridge for the Radio Cumbria Poetry Takeaway
during the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival at Tullie House in Carlisle.
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