Explore Poems: Science

Arctic tundra,
Arctic tundra,
How does your garden grow?
With lupine seeds
And fireweeds
And bearberries …

I remember first hearing rumors
of the atom. We are all made up
of crumbs, Q told me
when we were kids.…

We all have the same little bones in our foot
twenty-six with funny names like navicular.
Together they build something strong—
our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.
The bones don’t get casts when they break.
We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for...

Newsmen call it the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Teachers say it's the end of the world.

At school, they instruct us to look up
and watch the Cuban-cursed sky.
Search for a streak of light.
Listen for a piercing shriek,
the whistle that will warn us
as poisonous...

Universe
                     Galaxy
                                     Solar System
                     ...

Marvelous
Opaque
Orb.
Night-light
          for the world.

Hybridization, cross-breeding, evolution:
He takes to new theories
like a puppy takes to ice cream.
We whisper that our Green-Thumb Boy
is the black Mendel, that Darwin
would have made good use of Carver's eyes.
So clear his gift for observation:
the best collector I've ever known.
I...

Arachis Hypogaea may have been
smuggled to North America by slaves
who hid seeds of survival in their hair.
Despite your nakedness, the chains, the stench,
if white men did not eat you, you might come
to a cruel land where, tended by moonlight
and exhaustion, your...

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured...

Willie had a stubborn wart
upon his middle toe.
Regardless, though, of what he tried
the wart refused to go.

So Willie went and visited
his family foot physician,
who instantly agreed
it was a stubborn wart condition.

The doctor tried to squeeze the wart.
He tried to twist...

Baby ate a microchip,
Then grabbed a bottle, took a sip.
He swallowed it and made a beep,
And now he’s thinking pretty deep.

He’s downloading his ABCs
And calculating 1-2-3s.
He’s memorizing useless facts
While doing Daddy’s income tax.

He’s processing, and now he thrives
On feeding his...

When you were building the i-10 bypass,
one of   your dozers, moving earth
at the center of a great pit,
slipped its thick blade beneath
the water table, slicing into the earth’s
wet palm, and the silt moistened
beneath the...

One Sunday morning,
instead of studying The Illiad,
I escaped with Bino to Florence,
to see what miracles the aviator Manissero
would perform.
 
Whether he would demonstrate the art of Daedalus
or the folly of Icarus.
 
We found the whole city festooned with banners
on which was written:...

Up beyond the
Night sky, an
Indigo darkness like
Velvet
Embraces the farthest
Reaches of the mind,
Sun, moon, stars,
Everything.

I.  Spring
 
We burst forth,
crisp green squads
bristling with spears.
We encircle the pond.
 
II.  Summer
 Brown velvet plumes
bob jauntily. On command,
our slim, waving arrows
rush toward the sun.
 
III.  Fall
 
All red-winged generals
desert us.  Courage
clumps and fluffs
like bursting pillows.
 
IV. Winter
 
Our feet are full of ice.
Brown bones rattle...

A bridge engineer, Mr. Crumpett,
Built a bridge for the good River Bumpett.
    A mistake in the plan
    Left a gap in the span,
But he said, “Well, they'll just have to jump it.”

I am the Earth
And the Earth is me.
Each blade of grass,
Each honey tree,
Each bit of mud,
And stick and stone
Is blood and muscle,
Skin and bone.

And just as I
Need every bit
Of me to make
My body fit,
So Earth needs
Grass and stone and tree
And...

That afternoon in mid-July,
Two pilgrims watched from distant space
The moon ballooning in the sky.
They rose to meet it face-to-face.

Their spidery spaceship, Eagle, dropped
Down gently on the lunar sand.
And when the module's engines stopped,
Rapt silence fell across the land.

The first man...

sun
sunwarm
sunwarm on back
sunwarm on back legs
sunwarm on back legs loosens
            my heart
            my heart beats
            my heart beats faster
            in sunwarm my heart beats faster
                        I flex
                        I flex legs
                        I flex legs loose with sunwarm
                       ...

I grow in places
others can’t,
 
where wind is high
and water scant.
 
I drink the rain,
I eat the sun;
 
before the prairie winds
I run.
 
I see, I sprout,
I grow, I creep,
 
and in the ice
and snow, I sleep.
 
On steppe or veld
or pampas dry,
 
beneath the grand,
enormous sky,
 
I...