But why, but how?

 

Einstein reads the letter

torn and stained with blood

received from the German front line.

A black hole in the beautiful fabric

of the universe he has woven.

He thinks to himself:

But why, but how?

She stands outside the funeral

of those killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

dressed in her white maid uniform

left arm across her waist

right hand gently touching her lower lip

blank eyes staring off into nothing ask:

But why, but how?

The young man sits on the hospital bed

a terminal judgment delivered.

by doctor with expressionless face,

in monotone voice that says,

"Go home and prepare."

The young voice pleads:

But why, but how?

Way up on the mountain,

in a tree succumbing

to bark beetle blight,

in a high branch,

sits a bird that sings:

But why, but how?

Time Travel

 We are all travelers in time

Einstein proved that time was relative

to the observer

which is me.

Einstein united space and time

my world-line stretched

by the pull of gravity

but only the moment is real.

Sometimes fast, sometimes slow

the flow is mindfulness. 

Breath in, breath out.

Step into street,

secret truck strikes.

Uncertainty Principle

 It is impossible for us to comprehend

two conjugate variables simultaneously.

According to the quantum theory,

the thing we know with certainty.

In the brightness of the daylight sky

the night stars are hidden from view.

The lie repeated to accepting ears

until  the truth is lost forever.

 

If I hold onto your love with certainty,

will death remain hidden in dreams?

In search of Kerouac

 How it really happens, no one knows.

The quantum collapse, and a choice is made.

A random outcome from a distribution

 No one really knows how it works.

 

 Is it any different in our minds

when a choice must be made?

 We weigh the possibilities 

 consider the outcomes, 

 the consequences.

 In the end we choose,

without really knowing why,

or where we are going,

or where we will end up.

She walked out onto the road

and stuck out her thumb

in search of Kerouac.

She dared me, forced me to choose,

to follow down the road, or not.

And so we went together,

and the road was longer

then either of us could imagine.

The Lost of Innocence

The soft laughter of children floats through

the window looking out on the playground.

Pure innocent delight, what a lovely sound.

 No worries, no cares, outside of space and time

 unless a stumble and scraped knee intrudes 

 fixing the moment, breaking the rhythm.

Run home to Mommy to clean the cut,

she always calm,  always in control.

Do you remember the moment

you discovered  that no one was in charge,

that the skin of nature was scraped

beyond all repair?

Advice to the bride and groom for a long and happy marriage

 

 

Bride:

 

Be direct in stating your needs.

An example.  You would like him to bring you flowers.  You say, “Darling, I wish you would be more romantic.”  This just confuses him.  He has no idea what you want.  He thinks maybe he should shave more often.  You cannot hint, you have to be very specific in stating what you want: “Joey, I want you to bring me flowers.”

 

For the bride, that is basically all there is to it.

 

Groom:

 

My friend Drew has been married over thirty years to a particularly hard to please lady.  I asked him what was the secret to his long marriage:  “When I come home from work, I just start apologizing.”

 

I would summarize my advice as: in all cases, defer to her wishes.  Now this is much more difficult than it sounds, because no matter how the Bride tries to follow my advice above, what she really wants remains to the groom a mystery as elusive as why the stars shine. 

 

When asked for your opinion, understand that this is not what she is asking.  What she really is asking is for you to re-enforce her opinion.

 

Some examples.

 

You are decorating the house, so you go shopping for rugs.  She asks which of two rugs you prefer.  You say, “this one is nice”.  That is wrong.  What you should say is, “I don’t know dear, I like them both”.   Then she will hint that perhaps this one is nicer.  What she really means is that she prefers the other one, but wants her opinion confirmed.  That is your cue to say, “no, the other one is definitely nicer”.   You have made your purchase.

 

In general,  do not go shopping with her unless your attendance is required.

 

Another.  She tries on a dress and asks your opinion. Do not answer casually, giving your honest opinion, as this is a very dangerous situation.  Suppose you hate it and you think it looks awful on her.  You should say: “It looks lovely on you, but I am not sure it is right for the occasion.”   Suppose you think it looks stunning on her and you want her to buy it.  You should not tell her that, because if you do she will definitely not want it.  You should say, “I’m not sure, what do you think?

 

Around the house, you think you are doing your share.  You would say you do “half”.  However, you do not know what half is unless you know the whole.  Do everything for a few weeks- cleaning, grocery shopping, meal planning, cooking, all the diaper changes and all the bed times.  Then you will know what half is. 

 

Finally, to both of you: 

 

I know you are both dedicated to your careers and work very hard.  I might even say that you have a tendency to work too hard.  You must learn to find time to put work aside.  When going on vacation, do not bring your laptops.  And most importantly, when you have children, you cannot spend enough time with them.   Whatever time you lose to you career you can always get back later.  Time you do not spend now with your child you can never get back.  There is nothing more important.

 

So I ask us gathered here to toast the bride and groom, may you have a long and happy marriage!

 

 

 

 

 

Momentum

 The product of mass and velocity

The wind in your face on a bicycle,

lifting weights at the gym.

But what is momentum?

An example:

Oil tanker lost power at the Port of Corpus Christi,  

crashing into the pier.

Running in reverse, it takes a supertanker five miles to stop.

It has huge momentum. 

An analogy:

Economic momentum.

All those means of production,

all those workers.

A constantly expanding GDP

providing goods and services.

Too many goods we don't really need,

too few services we are desperate for.

 

We wait for the quarterly report.

We can't see the climate pier. 

half of us deny that there even is a pier.

We want jobs and growth.

 

An ever expanding economy.

 How long will it take to transform? 

 There is a plan to shift from oil in thirty years,

we have been reading it for twenty years,

but we stay the course.

At least we have a plan, 

but no one knows

 if that is really enough time

even if we started today

which we don't. 

Drill baby, drill!

 

Hey! Get out of the road! 

Run on the sidewalk!

Never enough pavement for my car.

Spend that infrastructure money on more roads,

build another pipeline,

not a windmill.

 

Peanuts

We never ate peanut butter in our house

not a Jewish food

had to go visit the kids across the street

a white bread family

peanut butter and jelly, not jam

 

So I was mystified by the fuss over  

George Washington Carver

born 1864

he did a lot with peanuts

beyond the butter

such a clever negro.

Every grade school year, 

it was George Washington Carver.

We'll give y'all one.

But only one.

You can have the peanut.

Stick to basket ball.

 

Say the name,

Robert Rilleux

born 1806

chemical engineer

who revolutionized sugar production.

 

Say the name,

Charles Henry Tuner

born 1867

a behavioral scientist 

who pioneered insect behavior.

 

Say the name,

Earnest Everett Just

 born 1883 

an experimental embryologist 

and Woods Hole marine biologist

 

Say the name,

Percy Lavon Julian

born  1899

steroid chemist 

who synthesized medicines from plants.

 

Say the name, 

Katherine Johnson

born 1918

NASA mathematician

crucial to putting 

THE MAN

on the moon.

Say the names.

 

OK so 

Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Y'all can have two,

in two hundred years.

You can have him,

plus the peanut.

 

Stick to basket ball.

 

 

George Washington's Birthday

Playground

Recess, that moment when we spilled out the door
into the free air and sunshine of the expansive open
running loose, playing games in small groups.

But there was one particular day
as clear now as it was half a century ago
when something shifted. 

There was a bifurcation.
Maybe an announcement by the principal I missed?
There were now two: black and white.

Hey, you cannot play with us,
my friends said.  You have to go over there
and be with the white kids.


ABC

 Walter was plainly different,
something gone wrong in the womb,
we all felt for him and treated him kindly.

The teacher was a power addict
I sat in front, teacher's pet.
Until the day she called on Walter.

We looked around,
why call on Walter,
sweet, simple Walter?

Come on Martin, you must know something.
How about your ABCs?
Come up to the front and recite your ABCs.

It was all about  humiliation.
 Walter knew, as we all did, he was not smart.
We watched in horror as Walter stood in front of the class.

 Walter stood rigid, his lower lip quivering.
He started to recite, but then stopped.
Tears streaming down his face-- why are you doing this?

OK Walter, you can sit down,
the teacher was satisfied.
The inferiority of blackness demonstrated.

We rushed out for the ten minute break,
crowded around, come-on, we all know you know.
And proudly he stood before us, and recited.


Shondra

Shondra was tougher than most,
her hair lost to some accident, she wore a wig
that the boys snatched off in the cloak room.
Only once, because she fought them savagely.

She was quiet and alone,
never spoke to anyone,
I was afraid of her,  as was the teacher
who never called on her.

George Washington, the father of our country.
Today we celebrate his birthday.
Astonished we turned to see,
Shondra, her hand thrust high.

Anxiously, the teacher called her,
and Shondra stood up to object:
But George Washington had slaves!
Lots of people had slaves back then, came the reply.

The class went crazy.
Kids were saying: we didn't have slaves, we were slaves!
That was the moment I learned
the voices of authority lie.

Death of Galileo

Since 1642 a Ponderosa Pine stood
on a ridge halfway up the Pino trail
in the Sandia Mountains
looking over the majestic westward expanse,
leading to the Great Divide.

Dead now, it has joined a hillside 
of blackened  brethren succumbed
to bark beetle blight
accelerated by drought and rising temperature
apparent to all who walk these woods.

Too much carbon in the atmosphere
our industrial disease.
Read about it in some newspaper,
or look out the window,
or notice the silence of vanishing birds.

The powerful never want us to believe our eyes.
Galileo. who urged the Bishops to look into his telescope,
and see the moons circling Jupiter,
just like the planets orbiting the sun.
Forced to recant by the Roman inquisition.

The heliocentric idea, already one hundred years old,
What scared the powers that be?
Copernicus’s compendium written in Latin.
Galileo’s dialogue printed in Italian
and available at the corner book store.