Physics for Poets (I)

To calculate the force of gravity one body exerts on another anywhere in the universe:

Begin with G, the universal gravitational constant.  Universal because all things draw each other.  Constant because nothing is favored, not the mud from the bottom of a man's boot, nor the word to rhyme the last couplet he wrote.

Next, multiply the masses of the two bodies.  Mass, not weight, because the context is interstellar space.   In a formless void, everything loses weight, and only the memory of drinking lemonade together remains.

Finally, divide by the distance squared.  Because the farther away anything is, the smaller its pull.  Smaller not just by the distance to London, but also by the distance he must be from her thoughts.  

Fragments Found Upon Grading a Housing Development Site Near Lake Stevens, Washington

May 17
    The candle's glow sparks the tip of each hair so that I am covered by a thousand tiny flames that dim or brighten with each movement of my pelt.  These are the only glows that have shown here for weeks, my den more often resembling the deep shadows now cast on the walls along the floor.
    Parting the hairs on my flank I can barely see the pink tint, or maybe it's merely the burn of memory.  But I can't really say that I couldn't have avoided it.  When I first peered down the chimney I felt a hesitation in my gut.  I could only see black, but, looking back, a certain heat rose unmistakably.  Perhaps I discounted it as the internal warmth of the house, having been fated at that moment to realize the day was cooler than it ought to have been.  Perhaps I never noticed, blinded in the moment by a consumptive anger, not against the pigs, necessarily, but rather against an entire world where pigs can now live in houses of their own building.  Or perhaps, given my prevailing mood over the past few months, I felt it didn't really matter and that it would be one step closer toward, perhaps my arrival at, my ultimate fate as a wolf.
    It's not that I depend upon hunting pigs for my livelihood--the grease spots left on this page are from the cooking oil that I use each evening when I fry a chicken breast or a garden burger.  The days of hunting for one's meat have slowly, finally, been brought to a close.  In my grandmother's time, during the mass exodus westward, nearly every species experienced a population boom, which the land couldn't support.  My ancestors were lucky--so many of the other animals were weak and sickly.  Still, our population had also grown, and my grandmother weakened from lack of food, until she died, leaving my mother alone as a pup.  When I was young, Mother used to tell me of her own struggle to survive, especially near the beginning of her abandonment.
    The cause of these unnatural migrations finally arrived, and many a wolf met his fate at the end of a gun.  Others were finished by traps or simply squeezed out by the ever-tightening fences.  I haven't seen another wolf since my mother was killed for her sheeply habit of cross-dressing, and it seems that my destiny is to become one of the last steps in the final extinction of my species. 

May 20
    Today I remembered a story my mother used to tell me.  It took place long ago, in another land.  A boy discovered that a wolf lived in the area around his village.  He captured the wolf, to bring him to the village, surely to be killed by local hunters.  But before bringing him to the village, the boy left the wolf hanging by his tail from a tree, for several hours.  I never remember the end—endlessly lost in imagining hanging from my tail.
    Mother used to tell me many stories of my heritage.  She told me of our species' ever- present struggle with humanity, even as close as my own father, who was killed after serving as the bearer of swift justice to a boy who could not control his lying tongue.
    For the past two days, I have noticed a small girl wandering alone in the woods in her bright red coat.  She is a picture of innocence with her shining little voice as she talks to trees or to a squirrel she might happen to see, or just sings her way through the stately old forest.  Curious about where it is she travels, I followed her yesterday to a small house on the edge of a town about two miles away.  She carries a basket, in which daily I smell an assortment of sweet baked breads. 

May 22
    Seeing her eases my mood a bit, as I notice in her eyes none of the disdain or indifference so often in the eyes of many who come through the woods.  Her presence reminds me of stories I have read about wolves' re-introduction to some of our natural habitat, such as Yellowstone, or areas of the Southwest.  I've also heard (or probably read) that adoption programs are sustaining a small growth.  Still, ranchers insist, with guns, that we die.  That a wolf is, by nature, a bloodthirsty killer.  The controversy and our sputtering population seem to indicate that the fate of my kind is sealed.  The pink burn on my left flank is a brand that I will carry, for the rest of my days—a reminder of where I, as a wolf, am bound.
    And amidst the bitter fighting that will decide the future of children I will never have, I despair for this little girl, wondering which side she will grow into.  Watching her, it seems absurd that she would ever betray herself or this forest she so obviously loves, but the future is a wily thing.  Not that it really matters anyway.  The fighting will continue until one side is wiped out, and money surely guarantees which side will be the victor.  She will live, she will die, and countless others will follow her.  I will leave this world having neglected my role in propagating my species.  What will happen will happen, regardless of whether I exist, whether I buy my meals at the store, or even whether I kill this girl.  And if I did kill her, it would not be out of any malice I bore toward her (though a bit I might bear toward her parents who never accompany her wanderings), but rather out of a certain love, and wish to keep for her, innocence and no knowledge of betrayal, either of herself or of that which she loves.