A Young Person's Guide to Physics
Sam Donsky
PDF Version | Print Version
In the beginning there is Amy
accelerating West,
particulates of my heart
oscillating in pocket.
In the operating room
lies Grandfather Z,
agile & blank,
cancer Pac-Manning its way
through his stomach.
In preschool one learns
what can be saved can be shared,
forgetting the rest, forgetting
the soft unsharability of mind.
In Physics they teach you
that there will be
a lot of moments,
until they all disperse,
at which point there will be
but casualties of those moments.
In dying my grandfather says
“life isn’t infinite; it is –
I completely forget what!”
In the snow Amy
chicken-scratches
“I love you” & then leaves.
(In a dream I calculate
the meaning of this
to be large.)
In Physics they teach you
that when a star collapses
in a spectacular fury
they call it a
James Dean of the Cosmos.
That when I ask Amy
to dinner she will
shake her head & smile.
That when a scientist says
“in the next twenty thousand years,”
he means any minute now.
Sam Donsky is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a Creative Writing major.