"I hope you have not underestimated the response you'll get and that you are ready for a downpour of verse!" writes Jack Fenwick, a reader who describes himself as an "86-year-old retired construction man who writes poetry."

Well, Jack, you're right. We received thousands of entries in the poetry contest. Taken singly or together, they illustrate vividly how scientific knowledge informs one's perceptions of the world.

The poems not chosen are in some respects as remarkable as the 19 that were. One person wrote about the gritty reality of life in a penguin colony; another composes poetry about subjects geologic as she drives home late at night from her job as a waitress. One child wrote about the seashore, another about her grandmother with Alzheimer's disease.

Special occasions inspired poetry. A sister wrote a poem for her brother, a theoretical chemist, on his wedding; a father composed verse for his daughter in honor of her promotion to computer supervisor. Many tributes were written to Carl Sagan.

Teachers write about and for their students, using rap and other verse forms to make difficult subjects easier to understand or remember. Students write about science, scientists, and hilariously failed experiments. Researchers sent poetry written in field camps in Antarctica and the badlands of South Dakota.

Choosing among the poems was difficult. In the end, the ones we selected represent a wide range, from touching to humorous. All are exceptionally fine.

Blair Burns Potter

from How Things Are: A Suite for Lucretians

16.

We have never even, stranger, been within ourselves.
Never have I sailed the red arterial grotto
to my thick hand, have never and never
seen the mauve noon there, like the sun through squeezed lids.
I imagine the air mid-palm as dense and tropical,
but there is no air; breathing there is sub-marine,
continuous but hidden, molecular like time,
and, like time, runs without our willing

as even our will does. I say I will walk, but given the power

over walking, I would fall debating which nerves to fire,

which of a score of muscles to contract in order.

If I were responsible for everything in my body,

I would pass out from mismanagement of glands

I don't even know the names of. As for the legions

of mitochondria and ion channels, how would I supervise them,

and still remember to draw breath in, to beat my heart,

as if I were charged with counting a million, a million and one

in a million voices simultaneously?

The body is what is done for us. From it

our dream of the world's beneficence derives,

from it, too, our helplessness, since, floating above it,

we do not know what we do or how we do it.

Thus, alone or together, our intensest pleasures

are pleasures, too, because they lose us in our bodies

with a slow perfection. I taste and fail,

or let music sway me with the wide slowness

of a plucked string in strobe. It is rich to die, I say,

torrents of darkness filling my closed eyes:

old metaphor, but true, since it is true in dying,

by gunshot, cancer, heart attack, whatever,

the last thing is: cells starve for oxygen and go down.

All deaths, in the end, are drownings in the body,

as what desire desires is drowning in desire.

James Richardson

At Princeton Airport

1

Over and over again

I entrust what I love

to the cold wings of the air.

The tow-line of connection

(and here I should mention

her brother in Africa)

stretches thinner and thinner

until my very motherhood

is in question and faith

falls short,

until I must shake

the snow off my coat

and hold on tight

to mechanical certainty.

2

The function of the curved wing

is not unlike

the function of the heart --

what flows past quickly

creates a vacuum

into whose emptied space

rises what I need.

I wait

with my hands in my pockets

for the twin engines

to lift her

above the water tower

above my disbelief

into the white sky which holds her

which holds her.

Penelope Scambly Schott

Haiku

Sir praying mantis

goes to his lady knowing

he will lose his head!

Virginal aphid,

with nary a male in sight,

mothers generations!

Snowy white egret

searches muddy waters in

yellow rubber gloves!

Three shiny leaflets

smile their poisoned message,

"Remember me? Don't touch!"

h4>Kristi Betts

Down's Syndrome Settling Heather

h4>

Heather and her moon-shaped face

wait at 8

p.m. for the bus.

She says she is a strong

swimmer

and I believe that

but wonder where she heard it.

I

with my correct chromosomes feel

some throbbing behind my eyes

and hate for her

her extra chromosome

because perhaps she does not.

Mary Ann Chapman

A reflection while shaving on the finite speed of light

Stars are further than we comprehend.

We view at last the news they send

and read the past. This face I see

is out of date, a counterfeit, a sham --

someone I was looking out at who I am.

Graham Walker

Encounter

Pinecones

Paloma Tomb

A Symbol Song

Sigmund Freud

Could not avoid

Obsessive thoughts of sex.

He felt these drives

Ruled all men's lives

(cf. Oedipus Rex).

But Truth (defined by modern mind)

Does not such malice see,

And says Old Sig

Was just a prig;

His thinking -- fallacy.

Don Singalewitch

Poesy

My love is like a source code

that compiles on the first shot.

My love is like a PDE*

when all nonlinear terms drop out.

And so you can extrapolate,

so locked in phase am I,

That I will love you till they find

the last digit of pi.

Rebecca Carlson

*partial differential equation

Theory of the Leisure Clams

On sandy beaches open to the surf,

"Olivella, Oliva, and Donax...

will quickly disappear," says Arnold,

"being rapid burrowers."*

Surf brings their game, their crops, their restaurants,

their supermarkets filled with meaty plankton:

sea-babies, larval innocents --

perhaps their own.

To sandy suburbs scoot those nimble clams

who missed the last wave. Now for a while they fast,

watch wrestling on TV,

work needlepoint,

unwrap the neglected, paid-for Book-of-the-Month,

work crossword puzzles in old magazines,

antique the spare-room chest,

polish the silver,

Get on each other's nerves, discuss divorce....

Twelve endless hours creep by, and some slow minutes.

The tide announces dinner,

And the clams climb.

G.P. Winship, Jr.

*Augusta Foote Arnold, The Sea-Beach at Ebb-Tide (New York: Century, 1901), p. 10.

Limerick

Redeeming Time

They tell me a proton

Long considered to be eternal

May have a life of 1033 years

Not much cause to worry

But we may have to redefine

Eternity, slightly downward

James R. Villiesse

The Rockies

Brawny, snow-cragged peaks

Scrape heaven's belly --

Youthful impetuousness!

Colorado Stratification

Layer by layer

History revealed --

Hungry river writes exposé!

Ernest A. Peterson

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