Angel Whispers
by Marilyn McIntyre
Angel Whispers
the time is upon us
rest, rest
clouds of snow
drift gently down
rest, rest
violin, serene
words alone
thoughts untangle
time solely owned
rest, rest
sing to your heart
wordlessly murmur
lullabies and time
to rest, to rest
womb and warmth
rockabye, rockabye
shush, hush, dream
to rest, to rest
listen, feel, fly
the angels whisper
rustle, ascend
rest, rest.
***
Published on: Jan 6, 2005 @ 16:22
Einsteinium
Janet Kuypers
from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series
Einstein understood
that everything was relative…
Why did he have to worry
about brushing his hair
or changing out of his pajamas
when he was busy grappling
with the foundations of phyics?
And once he fathomed
the relationship
between matter and energy,
once he understood
the interconnectivity
between matter and energy —
he suddenly understood,
after this Jewish physicist
left his home in Germany,
that Hitler and the Third Reich
could be working on an atomic bomb,
converting so little matter
into so much devastating energy.
At this time, he understood
the need for Roosevelt
to create this weapon
so the Germans wouldn’t destroy us.
The gravity of this discovery
in the hands of evil men
weighed him down,
and even months
before he died,
Einstein wrote
that although the devastation
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
seemed unfathomably horrific
and he regretted writing
that letter to Roosevelt,
his justification
was the threat of Germany.
When he wrote that letter,
he still had to appeal to Roosevelt,
that yes, to save us from Germany,
this weapon needed to be created.
Knowing about his torment
in making this decision
to ask for the creation
of the atomic bomb,
makes it so ironically beautiful
that after scientists
discovered an element
after the first explosion
of the hydrogen bomb,
they named the element Einsteinium
after the physicist.
How
ironically
beautiful.
Einsteinium is a silvery-white,
radioactive, synthetic element
with a high fission rate,
like the atomic bombs
Einstein first knew of
when fearing his homeland enemy.
But because of the short half-life
of all isotopes of Einsteinium,
all primordial Einsteinium
has decayed by now,
and beyond it’s nuclear creation,
there is almost no use
for any isotope of Einsteinium
outside of basic scientific research…
Which makes me think of the
life of Albert Einstein, I suppose,
for although Einstein worked
at odd jobs for years
until he was a patent examiner,
his mind was only good at one thing:
doing not-so-basic scientific research,
solving scientific fundamental puzzles,
if only he had the time
to study the puzzle long enough.
So I’ll leave a seed
a spore here on the page
and when you see it it will
take root
in your heart
in the strands of your muscles
but it cannot
can it
The words on this screen can only flicker
here for awhile
and cannot be the wind in the trees
or the yellow and reddish leaves falling from
those trees
Words are only words and yellow leaves are only
leaves and the wind
doesn’t know
they are catching the sunlight
and I’m not so sure myself
So I’ll leave a seed
a spore here on the page
and when you see it it will
take root
in your heart
in the strands of your muscles
and we will pretend it was possible
and this seed will grow
and because these words flickered for a moment
for a moment
maybe
you too can see the leaves falling
and you can say I once saw these
leaves falling and
they were black and they were white
and they flickered for a moment
and fell in piles
and I saw them
lying on the ground
yellow and red
Perhaps
The vet said, “Are you sure?”
And Glo said yes
But I was looking at the old girl
Walking around our feet, unknowing
And I said let’s take her home again
And see
But Glo said it’s too much of a mess.
Kind Glo who had brought Lady home
Many years ago and loved her
So we lifted the poor thing up
To the table
And she lay there, tail slapping
And I watched the needle go in
And the poor thing’s movements
Stopped almost immediately
And all I could think of
Was
Why not for human suffering
Perhaps me some day?
Americium
Janet Kuypers
from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series
When I heard there was an element
called Americium,
I thought,
what scientist felt possessed
to name an element
after the United States of America?
I mean,
was it discovered during a war effort
when everyone rallied with national spirit?
Was it a World War Two effort
against the element Germanium
named after Germania
(even though that element was not named
for Hitler’s desire to create
the perfect thousand year empire)?
I can’t believe the decision
to name an element Americium
was based on the boo-rah mentality,
go fight win, U.S.A., U.S.A….
I mean, is the actual element
somehow explicitly related to America?
Okay, fine, I will look on line for information.
Let me first check dictionary dot com
before Google or Wikipedia
for information about Americium…
But before I scrolled down to the definition
I saw the speaker icon,
so I could hear the computer-generated voice
say Americium for me…
Oh, Ah-mer-EE-cee-um.
Not Uh-MARE-ick-ee-um. Oops.
But the definition says Americium
is the products of high-energy helium bombardment
of uranium and plutonium.
Wow. I’m really going to have to research this,
and maybe I can dispel the World War Two links
I was apparently making up for this element.
Wait a minute, Americium was discovered
in 1944, but the discovery was kept secret
and only released to the public in November 1945.
(Okay, this doesn’t help my anti-Hitler case…)
Let’s see… Americium was first identified
at the University of California, Berkeley,
and it was chemically identified in Argonne Lab
at the University of Chicago. Okay,
so it was discovered in America, but
in the Periodic Table, Americium falls
right next to it’s twin lanthanide element europium;
so thus by analogy, they named this element
after another continent, America.
Hmmm, fun little story. But Americium
was primarily used in nuclear tests
conducted between 1945 and 1980,
as well as at sites like the Chernobyl disaster.
(Oh, so we go from Germany as our emeny
to the Soviet Union as our enemy,
because the enemy of your enemy
is not necessarily your friend.)
And elevated levels of Americium
were also at the crash site of a US B-52 bomber
which carried four hydrogen bombs
in 1968 in Greenland.
But us Americans have to come up
with more practical appplications
for Americium than nuclear testing…
And that’s when I learnbed
that the silvery-white element
(which is soft and malleable,
and tarnishes in the air)
has isotopes that are used in
smoke detectors.
So an element that can help kill
can also help save people’s lives.
Well, I guess in a way
that sounds like America, too.