Earth Day Atmospheric Observation

The issue of global warming is similar to very small and very large. It takes the tools of science to observe it. Scientists tend to concentrate on shrinking glaciers and other observeable events when explaining the problem; that is hardly the issue. The human population is the primary exponential spike that stresses earth systems to the breaking point. If humans and their father god cannot find or face the answers, mother earth will not shrink from presenting the solution. I guess we could call that, "collecting the data," for a poem of epic proportions.

Global Makeover One Degree at a Time

The wind up there screams
through crowded pressure pathways contours.
Great tropospheric waves
fighting to hold direction against thermal
mountains of tropic heat and polar vortex cold.
The writhing jet stream monster goes meridional balancing
between poleward adventure
and the slackening calm of doldrums descending dryness.
Onward it journeys in a furious quest,
feasting on the rising moisture from ocean waters and raining on the surface bounty.
Old Sol’s greenhouse step child grows out-of-control...
The teeming greenness holds the planet crust in its clutches,
breathing in and breathing out by season,
nurturing its children who release the planet carbon horde
from eons of incarceration.
Together they will conquer the finely tuned,
thermodynamic climate miracle
and return our home unknowing to the chaos
from whence it sprung.

Professor Martin Kemp, the Department of the History of Art

Podcast of Kemp on science/art dialogue ; from Leonardo da Vinci to the present day including the coming exhibition of Leonardo's.

Worth the time to download and listen.

ach-two-oh chemistry

Three Phases of Water


Remember what’s in chem notes? So
di-hydrogen oxide, ach-two-oh—
round O smiley with H-ears in place
doodled up like a Mickey Mouse face
is the object of this formulaic chase?
All round the world, water molecules
on the move, following physical rules:
Sometimes liquid in clouds or lakes,
when overheated . . . it evaporates,
and becomes part of the atmosphere.
Moves with the wind from there to here.
Getting re-recognized is not that difficult
It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity’s fault.
Though it can’t be seen until it’s forgone
the heat it stored, paints the horizon,
takes away the violet and leaves the red,
and gives us warning of a change ahead.
Set to go green; fall into a flower bed.
Amount to something. Become a bloom—
a thing of beauty we might presume,
but there is death in this sacrifice.
A warrior has died. Turned cold as ice.
The body, to sand returns, and the water
will slurry cement to honor the slaughter
with a memorial— one we can leave behind
as a science testament to remind
us how chemistry changed our mind.

8)(11

Danger of Discontent

Narrowly focused like a laser beam
Follies of patriotic zeal penetrate
The nucleus of xenophobic intention;
Forcing destructively flung chaotic
Gold standards reduced to a glowing
Half-life of sanity, inadequate
To rescue humanity from Protean
Depths of misunderstood shaman
Tricks that never quite provide
What was intended, afterall.

Inner Secret Discovery

Going deep to find the gold—
An Alchemist’s ultimate
Secret Omphalos retold . . .
Solar transmutations make

Far below skies that blind us
Aided by an old mine frame
And probing human genius—
Old Sol, of Helios fame,

Particles writ graffiti
In Nobel Prize casinos.
Infinitesimal... moving... speedy...
Physicists said, “Neutrinos!”

Experimental poetry: that would be some kind of cut-and-try discovery process— putting a good try out there to be experimented on, studied, pondered on for deeper meanings. In the spirit of the experiments that inspired this poem— a tribute to Raymond Davis who received the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics for his detection of the solar neutrino in a laboratory located nearly two miles below the surface in the Homestake Gold Mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota... I started with an idea on an inauspicious day, April 1, and after study and reflection decided that this piece went beyond "initiation" to the "discovery" of shamanistic connections between earth and sky. The physicists playing the role of shaman employing the tree-of-life symbolism for the modern age. I don't know yet what the post-modern interpretation will be, but the work is not complete as experiments rarely are.

A brief description of the symbolism by the author:

Inner Secret Discovery is about the human quest for the deeper meaning of the universe and human role therein. It is of the western cultural myth form and guided by those peculiar aspects that I know of to some degree, but also aspects that lie deep within a cultural psyche that I am not even aware. Thus it emerged to a large extent through no effort of my own and became apparent to me only through analysis. The tree of life is central structure of this poem.

Line 1, refers to the underworld and need to go there on a quest for the unknown (Later the actual physical location in a gold mine is revealed).

Line 2, portrays the magical qualities of searching for meaning by methods of alchemy (some unknown order present in matter but not known), Roger Bacon (1214-1294) and Sir Issac Newton (1624-1727) are two exemplars that would be important here as the work of the Royal Society promulgated the use of science as the an investigation protocol. However both were alchemists looking for ways to turn base elements into “gold.” Newton also advanced the theory of heliocentrism. Bacon who lived in the 13th century advanced the use of empiricism and scientific methods to understand the world.

Line 3, introduces the idea of omphalus or earth’s navel and the connection of the heavens to the earth and the underworld through the tree of life a mythology that reaches to very earlier cosmology and reflects upon the meaning and purpose of Stonehenge, one of which is the role as a solar observatory, but also as a keeper of secrets like the most famous Delphi of Greek mythology (the connection is made later in the poem).

Lines 4-9, refers to the nuclear reactions in the sun that produces light (that must be ignored) and particles (line 4), the location of the experimental apparatus of a water tank in the gold mine used as a detector (line 6), the scientist who makes sacrifices to determine the truth (line 7). Old Sol is the Roman name used for the sun and it is an acronym for “speed of light,” and makes the connection of the present science to the origin of western science that developed among the Greeks plus the connection to the Delphi omphalus from line 3. “Old Sol particles writ graffiti” is the tracks that are left in the detector when a neutrino passes through it.

Line 10, is a reference to the improbability that a mortal becomes a mythical hero, the idea of the modern scientist’s role as a shaman who explains the exotic, the synthetic reality of the casino implies the need for luck, faith, and madness to make a discovery about the direct connection of the sun to the earth made by actual particles that cannot be detected except through the efforts of modern science. Nobel prize also is northern European recognition that has only recently recognized other than white males, but so consistent with the long tradition of choosing a personage for the hero.

Lines 11-12, is the epiphany of discovery of what is going on. The physicist, the new shaman, proclaims the answer to the deep search for meaning by the naming of the particle, neutrinos, i.e. the inner secret discovery.


I recommend, The Quest for Merlin by Nicolai Tolstoy, Little, Brown and Company, 1985, for an excellent treatment of western myth as it continued in the far reaches of the Roman/Christianity advancement.

............Hyperbolic Hokum

Some things do not go to together
.................Poetics and Numeracy
......................A null set recursive
...................................................
Mutually exclusive......................
A wordless cypher lunacy...........
Series diverging to infinite nether

Poetic words flying above the hurly burly
Too refined for science and practical action
“My readers look for elegance, and surely
You don't want........ from me ............
..............................more than a reaction.”

Ernie and Oppie

Lawrence and Oppenheimer

Two conic sections of the same revolution
Non-intersecting, yet
Bound by a common geometry
Each deceived
By eccentricities they could not measure
Unspoken assumptions
Nuclear ambition reversed forces
First attraction
Finally repulsion
Fallen victims to laws greater than they

Scotsman.com News - Entertainment - Verse broadens the mind, the scientists find

Scotsman.com News - Entertainment - Verse broadens the mind, the scientists find

Dr Jane Stabler, ... claims

"...the intense imagery woven through poems, and techniques used by poets to unsettle their readers, force them to think more carefully about each line.

"There seems to be an almost immediate recognition that this is a different sort of language that needs to be approached in a way that will be more attentive to the density of words in poetry," she said.

"It may be because readers are trying to hear the words or recreate the imaginary event the poet has provided a script for."

Inner Secret Initiation

Going deep to find the gold:
No transmutation ultimate
Alchemist’s secret retold—
Solar reaction products make

Physicists say, “Neutrinos”
Infinitesimal moving speedy
Cloud chamber writ graffiti
In Nobel particle casinos

Old Sol from Helios fame
Probing deep in human genius
Hidden by an old mine frame
Far below the sky that blinds us

This poem is a tribute to Raymond Davis who received the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics for his detection of the solar neutrino in a laboratory located nearly two miles below the surface in the Homestake Gold Mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota.