"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Poem: Neon (2012)


A fable of love and chemistry.

*          *          *


Neon

 

I met chlorine yesterday,
An element on the prowl.
The wobbly outer shell of her electron cloud
Is one negatively-charged
Ping pong ball short of eight.

She’s so close to that magic number
She can taste it,
But if she wants the stability it brings,
She needs to find someone
With an electron to share or spare.

Her mother says there’s plenty
Of sodium in the sea,
But all she sees around her
Is hydrogen and oxygen –
Looking to bond, yes,
But not to bond with her.

What about me, she asks;
Is there an element in my life
To fill my outer shell
And make me whole?
I reply with a quiet negation.

She assures me that it’s all right.
Some elements take a bit longer
To form that special bond,
And she should know.
No doubt I’ll be settling down soon,
And everyone will say,
What a lovely compound!

I tell her I’m not the compound type,
And it only throws her for a moment.
No, she supposes compounding
Isn’t the institution it once was;
It’s the twenty-first century,
And the modern element
Can bond around.

But see, bonding’s not my scene in any sense.
She doesn’t know what to make of this –
She looks around confidentially
And supportively insists
That it’s okay
To bond with members
Of the same element.
Maybe I’d like to meet her friends,
The O2’s?

She doesn’t understand.
She’s looking to bond
Because something in her nucleus
Is telling her she wants to be completed.
Her outer shell is off-kilter
Without that eighth electron
To quiet her thoughts
When she wants to sleep.

I’m neon,
A noble gas
With eight electrons in my outer shell –
I have all the stability I need.
I don’t chase the chemical reactions
That scream through you when you bond,
And no new compounds
Will be born out of me,
But I’m my own magic number.
Send a current through me,
And you’ll be dazzled
By how I glow.


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