Poetry
Beyond the Standard Model
by Ursula Whitcher
They call it spontaneous, this desire
to climb towers in the pale light of spring.
The wind separates hair into cilia waving
in the fluid my heart pounds to draw in.
The air has weight. The sun?
The light that showers on me, falls, cascades—
it’s vacuum-flow. It has no weight at all.
Why doesn’t light have heaviness?
If not its own, a cousin’s—
a partner for the photon, matching hands
a quarter-turn around the spiral stair.
Collisions of a galaxy might make
a fraction of the force that would require.
Till then, we lean on the guard-rail unanchored,
me and the photons. They call it spontaneous
symmetry breaking, this loneliness of light.
Featured Poet of the Month Ursula Whitcher
Ursula Whitcher grew up in the Pacific Northwest and now makes do with the shores of a Great Lake. Subscribe to letters about Ursula’s writing at https://buttondown.email/yarntheory or pick a network at yarntheory.net.