This poem by California poet and scientist Lucille Lang Day weaves a shifting display of images -- the flight patterns of birds made vivid with mathematical terminology. As the poet's observations meander, they build to a question: is a galaxy something like a sparrow?
Form/Formless by Lucille Lang Day
A flock of red-winged blackbirds
swooping and swirling
in cyclonic and anticyclonic patterns
always in motion like Jovian clouds
that appear, then disappear
according to the mathematics of chaos
in yellow, brown and salmon-colored layers
The exquisite shape of an Allen's hummingbird—
ruby throat, rufous tail, emerald
cap and back—hovering over a cluster
of tubular flowers dissolving in fog
like the writer whose work
is obscure to future generations
and mistranslated in her own time
Words worked like horses
bred for plowing, strong and patient
yet with wills of their own
The universe is something like that—
beautiful and shifting,
each galaxy alive
like a seaside sparrow or a rose
"Form/Formless" first appeared in the Iodine Poetry Journal , Spring/Summer 2013. Other poems by Day have appeared previously in this blog (on 13 January 2013 and 18 May 2010).
Lucille--
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful poem you've written. I love the images and movement.
Victoria--