Charlotte’s birthday poem, 2012

The Art of Physics

It’s too easy to become alone,
Trapped in your own thoughts,
To believe you are the only static
Point in this restless universe,
To carry the burden of the whole,
A suffering crux in the mechanics of life.
Physics doesn’t work that way.

Where fear is sanctuary,
Forget what others want,
Come down to the noisy spheres
Where there is an abundance
Of the real,
And embrace it.

Against the wind and against the wishes
Of our peculiar tribe, and you
Gave me words to bury in my heart,
And where we were weightless
Against the motion of the world.

Where nothing matters,
Where touch and sense and scent
Make us who we are,
Unconnected, untroubled, aware.

Sailing on an unnamed breeze,
Impulses and reflexions,
Shattered stars on our own,
And yet part of it all.
 
But never the centre.