Gaia Writes to Carl Rovelli about Reality

“The illusion of space and time that continues around us
is a blurred vision of this swarming of elementary processes,
just as a calm, clear Alpine lake consists in reality
of a rapid dance of myriads of miniscule water molecules.”
—Carl Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Riverhead Books, 2016, p. 44

Dear Doctor Rovelli,

In 1992, I saw a boy chained to a loom
in the back room of a shop outside New Delhi.
His iron manacles were in reality
an undiscovered economic field. A single atom
floated freely in a rapid dance
around his ankle, while in gloom
he wove a carpet of silk threads
where swirls of Alpine wildflowers bloom
in brilliant hues of gravity he’d never seen
and would not ever see any time soon.
There is no time.

The beautiful blonde at the next table
who you’ve been watching with Italian eyes
primarily consists of calcium,
and carbon, and some things that she inhaled
from air pollution. The ashes of her body
will seem heavy in her daughter’s hands,
though in reality the wind will lift them
one by one, each moment of her life
a single photon, shifting states.

Leap into my clear turquoise Alpine lake and feel
the water close over the top of your bright
endothermic cerebellum.
One of my truths will drown you
and another one will wash away your pain.
But there are more truths lurking
in the depths
where those two came from.
You can hear them lapping now
on the far shingled shore:
particle/wave,
particle/wave,
particle/wave.

In reality I am most truly yours,
—Gaia

Cindy Ellen Hill

Cindy Ellen Hill has authored two sonnet chapbooks, Wild Earth (Antrim Press 2021) and Elegy for the Trees (Kelsay Books 2022). Her poetry collections Mosaic: Poems and Essays from Travels in Italy (Wild Dog Press) will appear in 2024, and Love in a Time of Climate Change (Finishing Line Press) will appear in 2025. Her poetry has been included in Treehouse Literary Review, Flint Hills Review, Anacapa Review, Measure, and The Lyric. She twice won the Vermont Writer’s Prize. She gardens and plays fiddle in Middlebury, Vermont.