The Topologist's Song

“The universe may have a complex geometry—like a doughnut.”—news report*

Hard by the backyard door, the iron kitchen range

scoffing orange crates and coal, Mother fried donuts

on it, upping them with cinnamon-sugar glaze.

The cosmic sous-chef thus sautéd a pocket's change

of stars—no amateur content with half-baked mutts,

the dear!—back in cuisine's antediluvian days.

So it is now. Of the great hypersphere, it’s strange

to say, the volume—2π2R3—is assigned donuts,

too, whose holes are infinitely small. God so toys

with those swopping souls in the toroidal exchange

we call the world. All those who are not wise are nuts.

How like you that, O gourmandizing girls and boys?

*https://www.sciencenews.org/article/universe-geometry-doughnut-physics?mc_cid=efc6a86999&mc_eid=ad6a8f5ad8

Anfractuosity

« Ah—tchi: ou Rhume de cerveau »

An intricate path or process, as of the mind.

—Merriam-Webster

Sneezing, one's heart may skip, a moment's pause.

The vagus nerve is the most likely cause.

(It says it does this "just because.")

No need to fear that short-lived syncope,

—it's mere "anfractuosity."

Vagus means “wandering”—and also "vague."

(The only rhyme that leaps to mind is “plague”—

it hardly helps to say "The Hague"!)

Wandering sneezing now is seldom seen—

but in the past it might have been.

Since "tortuous anfractuosity"

reverberates pleonastically

the adjective is best let be

and not flung at the unaccustomed ear,

to which the Latin verb frangere,

"to break"—derivatives, "fracture," "fraction,"

"fragment," "fractal, ""frail," and so on—

rings like an overfreighted gong,

I shan't note it birthed "anfractuous," too—

with words there's always something new!

English was fledged a dialect of French,

it seems, when French was drunk on Roman dreams.

September 2, 2024

Weeding by Lamplight A Petrarchan Sonnet

"A dry soul is best."—Heraclitus

The light of day confounds along its path;

the humid air’s a torrent, too, of wet,

you might equate with sitting in a bath

—that is, almost as wet as wet can get.

What, though, might be the bone-dry aftermath

of stanzas done in dampness? Best forget.

Petrarch—back then—for certain would not fret

to see a scribbler soaking, in his debt!

The purpose of a poem is obscure.

It ought to puzzle you, if any good.

The maker in his garden’s just in sight,

wielding his long, forked rake to feed manure.

He would free finer flowers if he could,

weed to order, if needs be, by lamplight.

August 31, 2024