Neutrinos

A few years back, TIME magazine reported that a team of scientists
clocked a flock of neutrinos—(subatomic particles—
almost non-existent bits) zooming a hair beyond the speed of light.
At the CERN particle accelerator they’d shot
a swarm of them through the Alps toward an observatory
in Italy, and it appeared they arrived
a splinter of a second—60.7 billionths—faster than a beam of light.
Both stations double-checked the math
and concurred, but months later re-examined the equipment
and found 2 pieces had malfunctioned.

The Special Theory of Relativity that underpinned most of what
we do know said that couldn’t happen;
if the neutrinos exceeded the speed of light, then they’d be moving
backward in time—and where would we be then?
Cause & effect would be meaningless—hence the equipment check.
And Einstein who knew something about light,
and who said: I am a deeply religious non-believer . . . had faith
in the facts, most all of which, like neutrinos,
escape us, pass through everything with no apparent effect . . . .

This evening, walking along the cliff, the blue hum of the light
edges over the islands like an alternating current.
I understand next to nothing of the white stars that seem to have
pulsed and flown away before my eyes for years,
that have kept their places above the rotating earth, revealing
little more than their places above the earth,
but reminding us of the equation in our bones between the atmosphere
and sea which pull us apart to the point
where we are neither . . . not the air, nor the dust off angels’ wings
suspended in sunlight through the window glass.
I preferred the sand, any syllable of the sea, the scrolls of surf
with no echo of all the iniquities we would soon
be conscious of, despite the oaths of stars, our dot, our micro-
second in eternity we never saw coming, or going . . . .