A scientist writes of scientists

     Wilkes-Barre poet Richard Aston is many-faceted -- a teacher, an engineer, a textbook author, a technical writer.  And Aston writes of those whose passion he admires-- in his latest collection, Valley Voices (Foothills Publishing, 2012) we meet laborers, many of them miners from the Wyoming Valley where he makes his home.  Aston also writes of scientists and mathematicians -- and he has given permission for me to offer below his poems that feature Marie Curie, Isaac Newton, and Galileo Galilei.  With the mind of a scientist and the rhythms of poetry, Aston brings to us clear visions of these past lives.

Scientist     by Richard Aston

It took more than a figure, face, skin, and hair
for me to become Marie Curie,
wife of simple, smiling, selective, Pierre
who could recognize — because he was one — my genius.

The discipline of mathematics

This poem remembers one of my students.

       The Prince of Algebra      by JoAnne Growney

       Madam Professor,
       let me introduce myself.
       I'm Albert James,
       whom you may know
       by my test score
       that's lower than my age.

Grasping at TIME

Different persons experience time differently -- as illustrated by the few lines included below (part II of  "Time" from my new collection, Red Has No Reason).  This musing is followed by the beautifully precise "Four Quartz Crystal Clocks" by  Marianne Moore (1887-1972).