"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

[musigneus.livejournal.com]

One of the (many!) things that have dismayed me about the whole LJ strikethrough thing is your move away (although the feeds certainly help). With the unfriending I had a sudden panic that I wouldn't be able to read your poems anymore, so I came to check and was relieved to see your letter to your father unlocked. Then I saw this one, which I'd missed - Schrödinger! Great images, and I like the way it circles back at the end. Now I'll have to come back another evening and see what other treasures I've missed!

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Eep - did not mean to cause panic! FWIW, I've either deleted or unlocked all previously filtered entries (and will be doing so for the fandom journal as well) -- one thing I've never liked about the feature is that people can tell the locked entries are there regardless of whether they have access to the actual content or not, and it's a nuisance repeatedly stumbling into the error message when reading someone's archives using the previous/next arrow keys, so I've periodically deleted such posts in any case.

Even more important, though, I'm extremely flattered that you consider the poems worth (re)reading. Thank you for that.

[musigneus.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing them. As for rereading, I've read Strain many times, and A Letter to My Father. Between the Hints too, and I suspect I'm forgetting some that I've revisited!