Poetic Motion in Plain Prose

“Perception is always interpretation” –

a line I borrowed to explore.

The loud sound heard when the flat

of our hand smacks against a table top

is our mind’s interpretation

of a wave created by two masses

which vibrate at frequencies so similar

that their particles interfere

with each other and inhibit passing through.

The back-waves from this interference

vibrate our eardrums, which

fire impulses to our brain,

which, in turn, recalls when mama said,

“Stop slapping the table,

you’re just making noise.”

We could have said,

“Not really, Mama;

It’s just a world of particles

signalling each other what to do next,

in a universe where we’re each

a bundle of energy equal to our

body mass times the speed of light squared.”

Whereupon, Mama would have said,

“Is that the kind of nonsense

they’re teaching you in school these days?”