Science
Our questions sprout
Like brambles
Dense with unseen truths
Quivering and tense as rabbits
Flushed into the open
When spoken aloud
Darting across the tongue
A disturbance in the listener’s ear
That flees barely glimpsed
Back into conjecture
Understanding a footprint
Of what might have been alive
What tore its warmth free of thorns
And escaped into possibility
Leaving only the suggestion
Of what was hiding
Safe as a copse
As a thicket
Amid the sprawling undergrowth of science
Pricking with the need to be known
Lovely. Thank you very much.
Diane Tucker
Hill-Stead Nature Blog
Thank you!
“Pricking with the need to be known” – I love this ending!
This is a beautifully written poem, with such thought-provoking meaning. I love the observation of the rabbit’s behavior as a metaphor for the questions and pursuit of answers through Science. I’m with Eve on LOVING the ending!
Thank you! When I started writing this poem, I meant to write about poetry. After struggling through several revisions, I realized that the poem had turned into a statement about science. I tried to “fix” it a few times, to bring it back to poetry, but finally gave up and let it be what it wanted to be.
Yes, I know how that is…how they can take us where ‘they’want to go. (Sometimes I think writer’s block is mostly a writer’s resistence to letting the words write her/him!)