Tennis

Who would have thought,

just after the big bang

you would get tennis and

tennis players, their girlfriends

and grass, so well behaved,

the ball, going in one direction

one second, then in the other

the next.

There was no plan back then,

the cookie just crumbled.

There are plenty of plans now;

like tennis they come from

no plans being made at the start;

not extensions of an original intent

but what happens when there is

no intent.

Why it went this way and not that,

why we have tennis not something else,

what was particular about that detonation?

It looks to us like there was a plan;

tennis looks like design not accident,

we see it through a neat and tidy screen

when really it is eggs braking

in an earthquake.

For the Benefit of Your Doubt

I'm a strange attractor when alone.

The rest of the time I’m just my self,

edited for your consumption, censored,

seasoned and soused to suite your palette.

In a lot of senses I don’t exist;

I am dark mater, dark energy,

undetectable by current instruments, 

apparent only through bent starlight.

My true nature is beyond the scope

of comprehenders; it is a singularity 

at a four in the morning red light 

with no other traffic on the road.

I’m eating my words here, rolling

my tongue round the limits of my

universe, enunciating so you can

negotiate my gravitational pull.

I’m a gentle force who wouldn’t want to

split your focus, put you through a prism

of misunderstanding, trap you in a spectrum 

of convention limited imagination.

But I am persistent and I demand your

experiment takes into account that I will 

behave in an uncertain way determined 

by the attention to detail deployed.

Nothing is decided and if you close

your microscope or shut off your

accelerator I will persist in colliding

with unregistered exotic particles

and continue telling the shadows, 

behind the wheelie bin in the dark ally

by the traffic junction where I wait

for a red shift to amber, all about it. 

Ellipses

Mandala

Mind Key

Quantum Entanglement

Underpass

Caterpillar

Orerry

Une Hommage de la Pomme de Terre

Rope Dancer

Pork Pie Hat