Edited by Dava Sobel
FRACTAL
If I were made of
homunculi
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the way a cauliflower
head
is made of
little noggins
would I be gorgeous
like this green one—
a field of rockets
each nippled with
hard cones?
IN PRACTICE
For Carlo Rovelli
Heat cannot pass
from a cold body
to a hot one.
That's it.
That's the one law of physics
“that distinguishes the past
from the future”
with its clutter
of burnouts
when what matters
is who's wearing
the kitty tail
right now!
Who thinks she knows
where meaning is.
Just wait.
“Times are legion, a different
one for every point
in space”
no matter how close;
how lonesome
Editor's Note: A kitty tail worked its way into this poem when the poet's granddaughters, arguing over a cat costume, interrupted her reading of theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time, excerpts from which appear here in quotation marks.