Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Tuesday Poem: Resilience



Mathematicians      have worked out
how to calculate       the bounciness of a ball:

(the coefficient of this  x  the cosine of that)
+   the differential of today's weather     all ÷ by
a piece of string      (and the speed of the train)
=  the same as     dropping different balls together
and seeing which ball     has the longest bounce


Measuring how well     a person will rebound
after being dropped on     is still being worked on:

some believe     it has something to do with
the thickness of their skin           whether their stretching
reaches a breaking point     or results in       withstanding
whether they can fight and flee          how many times
the person has returned to a vertical position before


I am feeling a little guilty for not having posted on Tuesday Poem for two whole months! Excuses - Xmas, grown-up children shifting house, work busy-ness, summer, grandchildren, checking out that the Hawkes Bay still makes wine...writing poetry???

Anyway, today's poem arose from contemplation on a phenomenon of recent (quaky) times.

Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week. 

2 comments:

  1. Quite different. Interesting concepts. Earthquakes certainly teach resilience! Thanks for posting this. I enjoyed it.

    ReplyDelete

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