The Gravity Of Gravity Poem by Harley White

Gravity keeps our feet on the ground,
Stops us from slapdash flying around.
This force of attraction ‘fictitious’ gives weight
And makes all fall down at equivalent rate.

(Albeit in flights of fancy it seems
That gravity follows the laws of dreams.)

Relativity caused Newton’s view to shatter,
In positing spacetime to be curved by matter.
So objects will take a particular path
That must correspond with Einsteinian math.

(The upshot is bodies have odysseys
Appropriate to their geodesies.)

Gravitons, a gravitational source
Of controversy, are seen as a horse
Of a quite different color altogether.
But then scientists aren’t birds of a feather.

(Some sit upon their a priori-based fences
And come up with theories defying the senses.)

Weak or strong, short or long, what is this thing
Called gravity? Wide hypotheses swing.
There are those who suppose that it’s this, others that.
Maybe someday, they all just might have it down pat.

(Meanwhile gravity, though we resize and shape it,
Will still have its own way— for who can escape it?)


< November 2010 >