Electrons orbit the nucleus.
All you need is love.
The no outlet sign on Town Farm Road.
To say it simple is to lie.
The road does go on
if you have a disregard for convention
and the right wheels.
There are rocks, sure.
But what way worth going
lacks them.
Mountain bikers
in their spandex
know the way through.
Our Russian neighbors
come with their basket
of mushrooms.
And late nights in June
the young bucks
pull their trucks from the mud
with winches and with Budweiser.
My students complain
that their teachers lied to them
when I tell them
about electron clouds
or that the Earth
does not
circle the sun
but ellipses
and at varying
speed
or that nothing
ever touches.
“Yes,” I say,
“but those are lies
of love.
They were all you were
ready for,
at the time.”
To say it simple is to lie.
Even this.
Light is a wave,
a particle,
both, sometimes.
It depends
on how you look,
even though it shouldn’t.
I tell them,
“One lie leads
to the next.
It is the only
way
we can get on.
These lies
are a railing
that guide you up the stairs
in the dark.
They are headlights
illuminating the way
for the Budweiser boys
through the fog
out on Town Farm Road
when they are young and full of daring.”
This at least is true.
There is no outlet.
No matter how far down the track you go.
Even to Westminster.
There is no thing
that we can say
and finally be true.
I am the Way, the Truth, the Light.
The stars are fixed.
I think, therefore I am.
There is no outlet to Town Farm Road.
No denying … that road is a doozie.
Sometimes things are true enough.