Switched-on Gutenberg Issue 14
Science & Technology
 
 
Love as a Study of Energy and Matter
     –-for my brother

He draws symbols for conductor, capacitor, switch,
positions resistors, inductors, diodes

and understands why charges
can neither be created nor destroyed.

He can explain how generators
convert mechanical energy into electrical

while motors convert electrical into mechanical,
and that the amount of current is dependent on the angle

between the wire’s velocity and the magnetic field,
and sometimes fuses don’t get it right.

Yet I forget that the Pythagorean theorem, quadratic equation,
laws of cosines, and Avogadro’s number confound him

when I see him working all month long
to build a green circuit board the size of a dining table.

Algebra’s needed, power is work over time,
measurements are uncertain, and not all zeros are significant.

Physics is the study of energy and matter
and their intricate pledge to one another.








Photo Credit:US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration


Copyright 2008,  Janée J. Baugher

Janée J. Baugher, Co-editor holds an MFA and teaches at University of Washington’s Experimental College in Seattle and Interlochen Center for the Arts (MI). A recent Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2007 Bread Loaf participant, Baugher’s work has been widely published, as well as adapted for the stage and set to music (Contemporary Dance Theater in Ohio, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Interlochen Center for the Arts). Baugher’s first poetry manuscript, Coördinates of Yes, was a semifinalist for the 2005 Tupelo First Book Prize, and is available through inter-library loan. In 2006 her second manuscript, The Body’s Physics, was a semifinalist for the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Ontario Prize.


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