If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
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.
It’s Time to Stand Up for Science
If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.
I’ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.
If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.