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A Boy With a Stick

I have nothing but wonder
     and wonder
For the physicists and mechanics
     in Geneva
Or wherever it is they are
     grubbing about
To find the secrets of the Higgs boson
     the God-particle
Or whatever else is in
     that donut hole

My respect for how tangled
The coils in their brains must be
Even to imagine what they cannot see
     and never will
Given our lumbering clumsiness
On the scale of things

Is overrun only by
The boy in our backyard
Who is discovering
How things are
With a stick

The mesquite tree
Crafted his tool and
     by some subconscious
     subnuclear
     subsistence
Process

Dropped it to him
The day before he becomes three
So that he can test
The nature of reality

He has switched
     and swatted
Everything within reach
Including an imaginary beast
He calls a Higgs Bison
     without neglecting
The bird feeder

Pausing in his research
To observe a butterfly

Something in his almost
Three-year-old brain
Want to swat it too
But he drops his stick
To follow it flutter-by

My job
The job of critters
Older than god-hypotheses
Is to foster wonder

So I sabotage the
Swat-instinct
     with respect
For beauty on
     the day before
     he is three

Swat and sweat are beautiful
But not like a butterfly

It isn't destructive
     what he does
Although it does leave
     in its wake
A certain number of
Casualties

He is discovering
The nature of reality
     at three

I will repair that later
     I say to myself
Seeing the debris

I think I had
     once
Such a stick myself
Before someone
Made me put it down

What
     he wonders
Will happen if I whack
At the dead oranges
On the dead orange tree
And he whacks and
Then he knows

He will not have to learn
That again, but he will

His arm tired
He drops the stick
And heaves a handful of gravel
Over his shoulder to see
      where it lands
And it does

Next time it will probably
Be different he hypothesizes
     so he tries and
Wonders at the variables

There is almost nothing
A boy with a stick
Cannot learn


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