let's get physicsal

Greetings, Poetry Friday People!  All are welcome at this table, even those like me who believed (may still believe) that they are not math people. 

But if poets and scientists are kindred spirits, then so are poets and mathematicians, for is not math at the heart of nature and science, and is not math just another language for language lovers to embrace?

Our INKLINGS challenge for the first Friday of November is set by Linda Mitchell, who as a librarian loves 512 and 539 as much as she loves 811 (right, Linda?): "For November, write a poem that includes the idea of percentage/ percent. Percentages are all around us in recipes, prices, assessments, statistics. Include the idea of percentage in your poem in some way."

Well, alrighty then.  Roll with it, folks!

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Superposed PercentAge

with reference to theoretical physics, Mary Oliver and Schrodinger’s Cat

The commencement speaker told my daughter she’d

easily live to 100 and beyond, "maybe on Mars!” he said,

with a note of thrill in his quantum entrepreneur’s voice.  

My chance of living to 100 is, according to the internet 

calculator, 0%.  At 57, I am instead likely to make it 92% 

of the creaky, forgetful way to my own personal century.

Doing the math, I find that these ≈57 years I have so far lived

are 0.619 of my predicted total out of 100, or about 62%,  

which despite counting as an F on most grade scales feels

satisfactory to me. Yet according to the RealAge assessment  

on my health insurance site, I am not only 57 but also exist

in a quantum state of 51.4 due to clean living and privilege. 

Like everything, I’ll die at last, and too soon--unless I spend

that 5.6 years simultaneously, like that cat, alive and dead.

Now I’ll tell you what it is I plan to do with the remaining

≈35 years or 38 percent of my 100% wild and precious life:

release

every

quantum

of

poetry

buzzing 

inside 

this box.

 

draft HM 2021

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 This one is wiiiiiide open, so it will be fun to see what others have come up with.  Check out their creations!

-Catherine at Reading to the Core

-Linda at A Word Edgewise  -Margaret at Reflections on the Teche

-Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading  -Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone

Mary Lee is also our host today, so wave on over in the manner of quantum particles, as if going in two directions at the same time, and I'll hope to see you there!