Nature Presiding
Often I write about the smallest things.Like Pascal I see the infinite spaces,And their silence terrifies me, too,But it’s the nano-scale that does me in.
Neurons by the billions inside the brainBlow my mind when I stop to considerWhat I am—star-stuff born of energiesNumbers can measure but not circumscribe.
Matter is energy stationed a whileUnder gravity, itself an energyIn the cosmic choresis never quiet,Cutting in with partnerships ever anew.
Matter descends to dimensions atomic,And there to waves that propagate the real.We behave as if we’re sound flesh and blood.How much of you did that racist rapier leave?
Your stumps? You imagine you’re laughing at now?Perhaps, but we have no evidence for that.Pascal’s wager I also remember:Despair’s last words by a pious polymath.
You pays your money and takes your chancesThe old folks used to say. Where are they now?Inside our minds and brains but not for long.We never understood that faith is loving
And can’t be spread by violence and threats.Oh, my god’s the best! I’ll kill you to prove it.Alone in the brain we’re left to wonderIf “grabbin’ ‘em by the pussy” is worth it
Just to prove a shyster can murder whom he wantsTo sate a cult who think he’s their daddy-do,Masking their greed with a Jesus so whiteHe wouldn’t recognize himself if he did come back.
At the nano-scale, waves will decohereIn quantum entanglements with environments.From information lost, the real emergesIn information humans can make sense of.
This is what it means to live as matterTaking shape (and taking is what it’s about)From probabilities Pascal would have blazedIn rational joy to try to compute,
But infinity would have out-numbered him. Such is the universe we find ourselves in,Where energy, the only constant, never rests,Least of all at the human lust for certitude.
No, a cell surrounded by a wall isn’t the self.Yes, cells need walls to survive. Not so selves.Selves are macro-scale momentary energyExperiments in cooperation
Rounded by circulations we can call love,Torn apart by fissions of cults and creedsBuilding walls that transmit hatred and fearDepriving love of harvests of plenty.
Just because matter takes shape from our brainsEntangled together with environments,Our minds are not final arbiters of the realDespite what the foxy would have you believe.
Measurements count, formulas advance, facts emerge.Nature behaves according to laws and rulesWe comprehend the only way we can,Participation, coupling, not coercion;
Coercion poisons the planet with greed,The perverted seed sowing destruction.The earth will survive but not so a speciesThat pollutes its nest and devours its young.
Auto-eugenics evolution abhorsAs much as inbreeding. Both are sterile.And logic will never replicate chance,The ultimate editor revising mistakes.
Nature presides over probabilities.Once, to read at night we needed a candle.Electrons were there. They were, they are, everywhere.But the probabilities lay hidden.
As luck would have it, some experimented,Saw the invisible, and lit up the world.We live under nature’s presidencyWho never with prejudice legislates.
Only we do that. To our destruction.We won’t live to see all Nature can be.Somewhere this morning Einstein is dyingOf malnutrition, Salk and Curie, too.
Power hardly cares—just wants more money.And religion’s no help, as history shows.A man of modest faith might feed the worldOn grasshoppers abundant in protein,
But power murders him in an alley tonight,And pundits mock him for their audiencesWho perish of cancer in their colons inflamed—We’d rather die than be taken for different.
Inside microtubules inside neuronsElectro-chemical transformationsEndow us with illusions of space and timeWe presume our senses are reporting to us,
Processes inconceivably fast and smallWe take for granted. They also take us.However arrogantly we reject it,We are the planet’s, not the other way round.
Everyday it shows us what we can and can’t do.Smug as usual we ignore the facts,Explode our devices and murder ourselves!Nature will preside over the cell that survives.
Neurons by the billions inside the brainBlow my mind when I stop to considerWhat I am—star-stuff born of energiesNumbers can measure but not circumscribe.
Matter is energy stationed a whileUnder gravity, itself an energyIn the cosmic choresis never quiet,Cutting in with partnerships ever anew.
Matter descends to dimensions atomic,And there to waves that propagate the real.We behave as if we’re sound flesh and blood.How much of you did that racist rapier leave?
Your stumps? You imagine you’re laughing at now?Perhaps, but we have no evidence for that.Pascal’s wager I also remember:Despair’s last words by a pious polymath.
You pays your money and takes your chancesThe old folks used to say. Where are they now?Inside our minds and brains but not for long.We never understood that faith is loving
And can’t be spread by violence and threats.Oh, my god’s the best! I’ll kill you to prove it.Alone in the brain we’re left to wonderIf “grabbin’ ‘em by the pussy” is worth it
Just to prove a shyster can murder whom he wantsTo sate a cult who think he’s their daddy-do,Masking their greed with a Jesus so whiteHe wouldn’t recognize himself if he did come back.
At the nano-scale, waves will decohereIn quantum entanglements with environments.From information lost, the real emergesIn information humans can make sense of.
This is what it means to live as matterTaking shape (and taking is what it’s about)From probabilities Pascal would have blazedIn rational joy to try to compute,
But infinity would have out-numbered him. Such is the universe we find ourselves in,Where energy, the only constant, never rests,Least of all at the human lust for certitude.
No, a cell surrounded by a wall isn’t the self.Yes, cells need walls to survive. Not so selves.Selves are macro-scale momentary energyExperiments in cooperation
Rounded by circulations we can call love,Torn apart by fissions of cults and creedsBuilding walls that transmit hatred and fearDepriving love of harvests of plenty.
Just because matter takes shape from our brainsEntangled together with environments,Our minds are not final arbiters of the realDespite what the foxy would have you believe.
Measurements count, formulas advance, facts emerge.Nature behaves according to laws and rulesWe comprehend the only way we can,Participation, coupling, not coercion;
Coercion poisons the planet with greed,The perverted seed sowing destruction.The earth will survive but not so a speciesThat pollutes its nest and devours its young.
Auto-eugenics evolution abhorsAs much as inbreeding. Both are sterile.And logic will never replicate chance,The ultimate editor revising mistakes.
Nature presides over probabilities.Once, to read at night we needed a candle.Electrons were there. They were, they are, everywhere.But the probabilities lay hidden.
As luck would have it, some experimented,Saw the invisible, and lit up the world.We live under nature’s presidencyWho never with prejudice legislates.
Only we do that. To our destruction.We won’t live to see all Nature can be.Somewhere this morning Einstein is dyingOf malnutrition, Salk and Curie, too.
Power hardly cares—just wants more money.And religion’s no help, as history shows.A man of modest faith might feed the worldOn grasshoppers abundant in protein,
But power murders him in an alley tonight,And pundits mock him for their audiencesWho perish of cancer in their colons inflamed—We’d rather die than be taken for different.
Inside microtubules inside neuronsElectro-chemical transformationsEndow us with illusions of space and timeWe presume our senses are reporting to us,
Processes inconceivably fast and smallWe take for granted. They also take us.However arrogantly we reject it,We are the planet’s, not the other way round.
Everyday it shows us what we can and can’t do.Smug as usual we ignore the facts,Explode our devices and murder ourselves!Nature will preside over the cell that survives.