Classic Poem

“Superstring”, the theoretical ten-
to-the-minus-umteenth ul-
timate subdivision of matter,
“the quantum's quantum”, becomes
almost conceivable if
you've seen stoneflies—those dim-
inutive hyphens inhabiting
bootprints after a blizzard quite
as comfortable tunneling under
as taxi-ing over their blue
lunettes and craters of ice. If ever
an infinitesimal lin-
earity contained “other
dimensions coiled inside it”,
surely these do: Somehow
they possess Mass; somehow
in the ninth slice of a hair
stoke a nano-furnace of au-
tonomous will; have registry
in a web of awarenesses
commonly called Life. . . . Which
is why I mistrust the Math-
'matical Magi, the Laureates,
with their “possibly twenty dimensions”—
every last one of them dead-
numb with numbers, pickled
in equations that'll never equate
in a lop-sided bi- or multi-verse
of opposed imperatives; and why
I will give thanks to Superstrings—
if such there be—for snow, for stoneflies,
for living metaphor.











By permission of the author.