Here’s a very short poem that I wrote in a PeopleSpeakUp Zoom workshop today. It’s a bit different from my normal style. I hope you all enjoy it!
I wonder many things
like- how does the moon hide
the invisible strings
to pull the tide?
Or- how the great sky
runs on forever
with no need to try
I think it’s clever
And where do dandelions lay
when it’s time for bed
and how do they
make a clock from their head?
Image by tlcdesignstudio from Pixabay
I like this very much. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you. I’m glad you like it!
The world of levers and strings lies just beneath the surface of it all. We may imagine it to be fantastical or mechanical, or perhaps one and the same. Science and Art converge in the imagination, and who are we to say that this is just a construct of our own minds? Perhaps this convergence is closer to the objective truth of how the universe works in all its dimensions. Poetry offers glimpses of this mystery and invites a feeling response or an analytical interpretation that invites the reader into Nature’s Oracle.
I love that you find so much in everything! Although saying that, these 12 lines are essentially many sleepless nights worth of pondering, especially about how the sky goes on forever! I spent a lot of years worrying about how they could squeeze so much infinity into the universe.
If Aristotle is correct, and the universe is eternal, then infinitude is a drop in the bucket for the universe. What seems inconceivably vast for us would be nothing for the universe. Like everything I suppose it is a matter of perspective.
But the question is what is the bucket? and what is outside of the bucket? How does an infinitely large bucket exist? How is it a bucket when you never reach the edges?
What is outside the bucket! Yes! This is my essence of ponderings about the universe… what’s on the other side of the wall at the edge of the universe?
I heard there was an infinite number of other universes. In each one there’s a different version of each of us making subtly different mistakes to the ones we make in this universe. But then again, there night just be a forever of emptiness filled with all of the sleep I lost pondering it.
The answer to your questions depends upon the perspective of the questioner. From our perspective, since we are not eternal, the idea of an infinitely large bucket is an absurdity. The reason is that by definition there are neither spatial nor temporal edges in any direction to true infinity, and so the infinite bucket would have no edges with which to contain anything. The perspective is different for eternity. Most Westerners identity eternality with “God.” Aristotle identified it with the “universe.” However conceived, eternality definitionally is absolute being lacking nothing. It is fully itself and realized in everything. It contains everything including even the Platonic Ideas or abstractions. By definition, it would include also infinitude. For us, to speak of “containing” infinitude is senseless. For eternal being, it is part and parcel of what it means to be eternal. The main difference between eternal being and infinitude is that eternal being by definition is self-existing and the idea of infinity, like every other idea, somehow derives from eternity. The Greeks and the Gnostics defined this as an “emanation” from the “One,” or something along those lines. The Christians wrestled with this philosophical problem in their differentiations between “begotten, not made” in defining the Second Person of the Trinity and with “created” or “made” in defining everything else but God. Regardless, the reality or absurdity of an idea such as an “infinite bucket” ultimately comes down to the eternal or not eternal perspective of the observer and, in our case, the questioner.
I like the slightly whimsical tone here, and particularly the last two lines. Short poems can cover a lot of ground…a bit like a dandelion’s seeds.
thank you. I’m glad you like it. I like a bit of whimsy, but I seldom attempt it in my work. I’m glad it worked!