Science

Never really liked science, couldn’t do well in it;

I guess I never really cared about the why of things,

what made them happen, what forces at work created

whatever it was that science was trying to prove.

Like seeds, putting the bean in a glass, sandwiched

between the glass and some soil, watering it,

watching a root sprout out and grow down into the soil,

little feathery tendrils trailing and a stem

rising upward to escape perhaps its own confinement,

life there tightly held, waiting to grow, like all of us.

Still can’t explain the seed, can’t remember things

like osmosis, mitosis, photosynthesis, those cells dividing

and merging into whatever it is they are supposed to become.

I’d watch my seed every day on the window ledge next to my desk,

marvel at it, measure its growth rapidly struggling

through the soil, pushing it aside, a curved route down

and a curved route up, - did it know where it was going? -

no straight lines in nature’s quest to survive, mine either. 

After the test I barely passed, we let it die on the window

ledge, too much light, too little water, the experiment over,

and we never talked about its passing, or what happens next;

where do dead plants go? Is there a heaven or hell for them?

I do remember the D that I got in chemistry and the rash

of excuses I made to explain it, the teacher, the class,

material too complicated for my high school brain,

and now at 64 I still don’t know science, still don’t care,

make no excuses, but my garden grows in the summer and dies

in autumn, to grow again in spring; the rains fall,

the sun shines, and the roots go down, the stems go up,

unconfined, pushing through the soil, nature surviving.

And us? The science of us, the why and the forces at work?

We all must die, like my garden, my little plant,

too much light, too little water, the experiment over,

and what comes next, death, is just a mystery to us,

a big unknown, all the theories and suppositions proclaimed

that science can’t prove, can’t explain, heaven

or hell or ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Thanatopsis,

and the poet’s command to live, “that when thy summons comes ...

sustained and soothed ... approach they grave

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams¹.”

¹ – Thanatopsis – William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)