"Schrodinger's Top Hat"

[bronze_ribbons]

This is an old poem of mine that appeared in Star*Line a ways back (July/August 2003). I'm reposting it here because it's still one of the better villanelles I've written, and because I'm being thumped by a quantum plotbunny (e.g., Dumbledore as Niels Bohr, Neville as Wolfgang Pauli, Draco as Werner Heisenberg, Lupin as George Gamow, Snape as Enrico Fermi...).



Schrödinger's Top Hat

Either there's a rabbit, or there's not,
but if you wait, a rabbit may appear
but even if you wait, it well may not.

Some might say that magic's merely rot --
a cheerful shake of superstition's snare.
Sometimes there's a rabbit, sometimes not,

but even if you skip the wheel and slot,
the sidewalks show more cracks from year to year.
Will your mother blame you? Maybe, maybe not.

It's hard to read the future when you're taught
not to cross each corner 'til you're there
whether rabbits wait for you or not.

And even if the scarves stay bright and taut,
will the coins fall freely from each ear?
Even if we wait, they well may not,

but 'til the fingers fail to catch what's caught,
joy can leap from nowhere like a hare:
either there's a rabbit, or there's not,
no matter if you wait for it or not.

~ pld

Comments

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

Heh. My senior year in high school I was taking two sciences and three languages, all at different levels: Regents physics, AP Bio, French V, Spanish II, and Latin I. Because my school (and the state) assumed that no one would take more than one language and that no one taking first- or second-year languages would also be taking advanced courses of another discipline, I had the distinct pleasure of having all give exams fall within the same two time blocks. They parked me for the day in what they called "The Conflict Room" - where students had to take their tests when they had overlapping exams - and made me take all five sequentially. And my least-favorite teacher was the proctor for that day...