Poem: ‘On Visible Light’

There is science in meter and verse.

Knowledge is the fruiting body of light, and light the fruiting body of photons

at the end of traveling through our nights

to reach the velvet chair, the common snipe, where we see that in an object's reflection,

knowledge is the fruiting body of light.

Just a slice of electromagnetic wavelength and sight is ours, a blindness gone

at the end of traveling through our nights.

All this way and yet something's not right. This blue color we see is the chair's rejection.

Knowledge is the fruiting body of light

whose shadows dog us. Might this be the heart of why we fail to reach satisfaction

at the end of traveling through our nights.

Always wanting what is beyond our sight, always drawn toward the parts still hidden. Knowledge is the fruiting body of light

at the end of traveling through our nights.

Dava Sobel edited it.

Donna Kane divides her time between Canada and Britain. There are nine poems about the Pioneer 10 spaceship in the most recent volume of her poetry.

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