Science in meter and verse

Edited by Dava Sobel
elusive
if not rare.
there are always vectors
and other values
if not measured
at least felt or experienced
at the boundary of ground:
imbalance and, therefore, movement.
the creation comes, then
with the condition of height and time:
eight stories up
suspended in a moment
binary values
of ones and zeroes—
just snow
or not snow—
no vectors of momentum
or spin
no description of unique shape
or crystalline order
just points to move between
floating to observe
as picking through pond lilies
or stars in the winter sky
there or not there
in this moment
the scalar nature of snow
*No longer in print but will be reissued electronically in early 2022 and as part of a new volume, Hear Here: Selected Poems (LuLu).
This article was originally published with the title “The Scalar Nature of Snow” in Scientific American 325, 6, 28 (December 2021)
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1221-28