“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust” – RumiWe are soaring through new regions of our universe
at 1.3 million miles per hour,
hurtling somewhere, one might say,
where no man has ever gone before
shielded from death by a force field
made of the thinnest membrane of soft sweet air,
swathed in clouds we are propelled onward and held onto,
and somehow survive. Just think of it as we travel.
All of it, the particles of which we are composed,
were forged in the collapsed hearts of not just average stars,
but truly majestic ones, eight solar masses or larger,
those are the giants that go nova,
spewing their dust of obliteration across the universe
again and again, billions of these stars contributing this iota
and this one, accreted into you, the ocean, me, this trembling tree,
atoms from everywhere swept up into patterns that first appeared
like Kirlian photographs revealing the energy fields
to which they are attracted and still sustain us
in radiant outlines of fiery cosmic strands, we are
billions of temporary particles exchanging places.
We trail a glowing mist of our selves;
nebulae ripple in the waves of our wake,
yet the field remains as the atoms themselves
disappear and reappear at Planck speed
5.39 times ten to the minus 44th
we sizzle, pulse and flicker and yet
retain the most current revision of ourselves
the same general idea of hand and head, then add
shimmering starlight that sparks across the skin,
and we glide along the golden ley line follow
the perfect ratio spiraling inward,
Fibonacci curve to zero, all
for this particular dance of light within the neurons,
this plus this trace memory of ever and only now
sustained by a wave of intention
until we arrive, at last, nowhere.
And so it is at the entrance to stillness
in this unknowable moment.
Our alabaster whorl of disappearing inquiry
is washed quietly away
by a dark, foaming salty sea.
© John Greenleaf-Maple 2/25/2017
Notes about this poem:
– Everything heavier than hydrogen and helium was created in the dying moments of a massively large star collapsing in upon itself. Only stars that are eight times larger than our sun or bigger have the capability to go nova and spew their contents across the universe.
– If you cut the top off of a leaf, and take a picture of it with Kirlian photography, it will show the energy field of the missing portion of the leaf that was used to maintain its atomic / cellular order. Our bodies use a similar energy field blueprint.
– Quantum particles constantly disappear and reappear in our universe, spending part of their lives in an alternate dimension. Even the most fundamental particles in the proton, which were thought to be the one last remaining solid thing, are flickering in and out of existence at Plank speed, represented in the poem. One theory says that the particles are flipping between their matter and anti-matter states. The paired antimatter particle could be anywhere. Whether this is true or not, they are definitely not here all of the time.
– The Golden Ratio / Fibonacci curve is observed throughout nature, and in the spiral arrangement of our galaxy. 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, etc. The spiral whorl in a nautilis shell is one example. Geometrical symmetries that are seen throughout our universe are derived from the ratios produced by these numbers.
– We lose approximately 3 million cells per second from our bodies, which are constantly being replaced by new cells. Each cell contains approximately 100 trillion atoms. About 10 octillion atoms are in an average human, or a 1 followed by 28 zeros.
– Atoms consist primarily of energy. If one were to combine all of the proton particles that scientists say have measurable mass from every atom within all 7+ billion humans on earth, it would be about the size of a grain of rice.
John Greenleaf-Maple Poetry & Ruminations 