Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Writing Chemistry Poetry is hard! should I keep trying?

from whence new locks of flaxen hair?
how do deep gashes heal?
Are there weavers in her scalp?
factories made of steel?

i marvel that a crawling babe
from its mother's womb can come
grown only by the food she eats
how is this transformation done?

we've looked within by microscope
and still it's mystery
till by centuries of dirty labor
we learned whats chemistry

we watched microscopic urchin egg
split to two then four then eight...
till more and more form embryo
the cells move 'round and differentiate

it is the way with all living beings
from cells do other cells become
and we've found single cells in ponds
behave like miniature animals

what are these living sacklike beings?
more cells inside em ad finitum?
no! we discovered molecules
that run round and round and exite em.

two hundred years of fruitful confusion
in laboratories of fire and glass
we learned to weigh the very air
completing accounts for chem reactions

lucretius imagined molecules
that made everything we know
it took till 1922
that by measuring we could show

jiggling in the palm of your hand
the number of atoms boggles the mind
six hundred thousand billion billion
of 92 different kinds

each living amoeba single cell
contains a swirling multitude
of molecules who's number exceeds
all the bricks in new york city

these molecules are more than bricks
they jiggle and swirl all around
sensing each other upon collision
making decisions of what to do

springloaded mechanisms guided by equations
join each to each or disband
building structures quite complex
and dynamic patterns profound

thru networks of these logical decisions
protein molecules in your cells
engage in elaborate computations
coordinate behavior of a complex being

....
a poem on molecules?

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