Poem: "The Small and the Swift"
This poem came out of the October 1, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from freshbakedlady and Dreamwidth user Corvi. It also fills the "Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey: Time Travel" square in my 8-13-13 card for the Ladiesbingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette.
The Small and the Swift
Neutrino the Trickster
flitted along the curve of spacetime
like a dragonfly following the line of a river,
all sun-glint and gossamer wings.
In the facets of her jeweled eyes
she could see the whole of creation.
She held science on her left forewing
and curiosity on her left hindwing.
She held magic on her right forewing
and dreaming on her right hindwing.
She swooped through matter
and antimatter and dark matter
and empty space, and to her
it was all the same
for it could scarcely touch her.
She was fearless
in the face of her freedom,
a wild thing from the wild yonder
who yet looked to the mortal world.
Neutrino the Trickster had been searching
for a long time to find someone
to share her secrets.
In an empty lot full of weeds she found a girl
with hair as curly as cosmic strings
and skin the color of space between stars.
She was crying, tears of salt and water
trickling down the planes of her face.
"What is wrong?"
asked Neutrino the Trickster.
"I got kicked out of school,"
said the girl.
"I blew up the science lab.
Just a little."
"Ah," said Neutrino the Trickster,
"it's funny how upset people can get
over even a little bang."
The girl laughed then.
"Who are you?"
she asked.
"I am Neutrino the Trickster,"
came the reply,
"and if you will be my friend
then I will teach you a great secret."
"I am Jakira," the girl said,
"and I don't have any friends."
"You do now,"
said Neutrino the Trickster,
and it was so.
They studied together
during the long weeks
of Jakira's suspension.
It was not so hard
to translate the hidden script
with which the universe was written
into words and numbers
that a mortal mind might grasp.
When Jakira returned to school,
she filled the blackboards with equations,
chalk dust skating over slate
like schools of water-striders on a lake,
sending out ripples farther than the eye could see.
"I'm writing about gravity,"
said Jakira.
The science teacher scolded her.
"What nonsense! You are too young
to know anything about that."
He sent her to the principal's office.
"I'm writing about spacetime,"
Jakira said.
"Get your head out of the clouds,"
the principal said.
But Jakira's head was already
a whole lot higher than mere clouds.
That night Neutrino the Trickster said,
"Come with me," and Jakira did.
They traveled along the curve of spacetime,
two winged beings tracing the sky's river.
They danced forward into the future
and tumbled back into the past,
saw stars as they were born and died,
watched spacetime unwind itself
like the fiddlehead of a fern uncoiling in spring.
"It's mass that poses the problem, you perceive,"
said Neutrino the Trickster.
"Change mass to energy,
and then you may go
when and where ever you will."
Jakira turned her eyes to the stars,
and the spiraling sweep of the galaxy
as it curled around them
like an eddy of bright water.
"Yes," said Neutrino the Trickster,
"I thought that might attract your attention."
The next day Jakira covered the blackboards
with a new formula describing the means
of interstellar travel by mass-energy conversion.
"What am I going to do with you, young lady?"
the superintendent exclaimed.
"You are such a troublemaker!"
And he sent her home again
for being too much of a distraction in class.
Jakira flopped down on her bed and cried.
"Nobody will ever listen to me," she wailed.
"What good is knowledge
if I can't get people to pay attention to it?"
"The right people will pay attention,"
said Neutrino the Trickster.
"Not if they never see it,"
Jakira grumbled.
"Stop thinking inside the box!"
Neutrino the Trickster scolded.
"I can't help it," Jakira said.
"The people in charge of the school
have more control over my life than I do."
"No they don't," said Neutrino the Trickster.
"The people in charge of the school are big and slow.
You must learn to go around obstacles like that.
Space belongs to the small and the swift!"
Jakira thought about that.
She realized that she did not care
about being rich or famous.
She just wanted to get the ideas out there.
So she spent the night
posting her equations on the internet
where anyone interested could enjoy them.
Jakira took her thoughts of gravity
and flicked them from mass into energy,
sent them skimming ahead
to see how people would respond.
Already she could feel
the weight of the Nobel Prize in her palm,
warm and heavy as a river-stone,
but she did not care.
All that mattered to Jakira
was the sight of humanity
rising in a cloud of shining wings.
With that thought in mind,
she lay down on her bed
and fell asleep.
Neutrino the Trickster
hovered over the scientist-shaman
and blessed her with all four wings.
* * *
Notes:
This poem is a science myth, blending elements of science and mythology. Imagine the spectrum of reality as a torc, bending until the ends of science and magic almost touch. Science myths are one category that bridges the gap. People look to science for information and mythology for meaning -- but the two can coexist.
A neutrino is an enigmatic subatomic particle. The first neutrino event wasn't recorded until 1970, although people suspected the existence of neutrinos earlier.
Dragonflies symbolize many things including depth of character, power and poise, breaking illusions, living in the moment, and awakening. They appear in some important myths.
The left brain and right brain use different ways of thinking. The left brain is logical while the right brain is intuitive. This is a trend, not an absolute -- the brain has many other tricks and complexities -- but it's a useful distinction.
A teenage student was expelled from school on felony charges for a science experiment that produced a tiny explosion in which nobody was hurt. Although the charges were later dropped after a big public stink was made, this remains a glaring example of prejudice against black women getting uppity and wanting to horn in on white-man territory like science. As anybody who practices science knows, sometimes there will be unexpected results. Excessive punishments for trivial offenses comprise a well-known form of child abuse; this is a severe and growing problem in the school system today.
Quantum causality opens the way for new conceptions of time travel.
Faster-than-light travel is hindered by the increasing demand for energy in order to move mass at higher speeds. Mass-energy conversion is one suggested method for resolving this issue.