Poem for Wednesday and Hazel Wolf Wetlands

The Multiverse 

By Diane Thiel 

We started talking about the multiverse

before the twentieth century, a different way

of making sense, acknowledging

the changeability and indifference.

Science opening up the notion

of one self turning left

while another is driven to turn right,

a new conundrum of freedom and constraint.

Despite the theories, most of us

still hold on to the universe

as the largest thing we can imagine.

But sometimes I watch that other self

from a different angle on the multiversity,

slide down that other choice, what I might

have said instead, in that room of dry twigs,

gasoline in the corner, and so many matches,

then watch myself continue along

that low road for a while, too long at times,

wondering how that would all turn out.

My doppelgänger grinning in the distance,

waving from what looks like a getaway car,

moving out of sight to live out a half-life

I can never keep track of.

And really, who knows I didn’t

take that turn? Who knows that isn’t

a reality? It is certainly more satisfying

than this silence.

We usually have more than two choices,

infinitely more in this pluralistic multiverse,

as Oppenheimer put it when his work opened boxes

without opening them, when he elaborated on

one unfortunate cat, or a lucky one,

while another self exploded and ended

far more than his better self

would ever have agreed to

or intended.

-------- 

We had spectacular weather on Wednesday. I talked to my high school friends in the morning, did some chores, watched two episodes of Hawkeye with Kristen, then Paul and I went to Hazel Wolf Wetlands, which we'd visited in the winter and thought would be a good place to see animals in the spring. In fact, the mergansers there seem to have migrated like the ones near where we live, though there were wood ducks and mallards, plus a shiny green-striped garter snake! There was a lot of traffic so we wound up not getting our shopping done but there's always tomorrow for that.

 

We had chicken and rice for dinner, then we watched The Masked Singer -- I would have cut Gumball instead of Poodle Moth, but they kept both older women and at least we're at the point where everyone left can really sing. Then we watched the season finale of Animal Control -- cute, but not enough animals -- and now we're watching the start of the season of Dark Matter, which is well paced and performed by actors with great chemistry, though it's too soon to tell whether the sci-fi gimmick that powers the story will ultimately not be enough to support the multiverse character-building.