Sonnet for the Tiny Neutron
by Arnold Seong
At first it seemed to have no mass—just dazzle,
flavored with zip and bang. They called this cosmic,
quirky weirdo the Ghost Particle:
space partitioned to mere verb, mere spirit,
mere form. Though it’s not, of course: it tropes,
changing states at random as it whizzes
through space, its flavor a matter not, as hoped,
of order, but probability. Thus:
change. Thus: time. Thus: mass.
And the Standard Model’s calculus?
Empty. Beauty doesn’t prove the math
(Einstein’s famous malcontents). But what is
content if not form? Everyone knows
God does not play dice. He merely throws.
*Italian physicist Enrico Fermi gave the neutrino its name, which translates to “little neutral one.”
Arnold Seong’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets and Poetry Northwest. He lives in Southern California and teaches ESL and Academic English at UC Irvine.