Sipping Nectar

Douglas Reid Skinner

The first precision atomic clock

was built in 1955

by Louis Essen and Jack Parry.

It was accurate measuring down

to a millionth of a billionth of a second

and worked by counting the number of times

an atom of caesium-133

flipped from one state to another.

Defined this way, a second’s the time it takes

for nine thousand, one hundred and ninety-two million,

six hundred and thirty-one thousand,

seven hundred and seventy spin flips

to have happened in your atom,

which on any one day is much the same time

as an Amethyst Woodstar hummingbird

requires for the eighty wingbeats that keep

it hovering in place and sipping nectar

from a delicate floral trombone.

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 25 August 2022

Broken

Dawn Garisch

A toy horse falls from the shelf, breaks a leg.

The small boy, tearful, shows an uncle

who gives him a tube of glue:

The boy tries hard like he always does,

not knowing how to fix

his parent’s domestic mess.

The horse leg sets, stuck back skew,

now it’s lame, he’s made things worse.

His father’s long gone, but he’s to blame,

the glue of family rendered useless.

The boy wanders out of the house,

climbs the tree, sits by himself, sick

with crying. Wanting his father

joined to his mother, wanting

the father to come home to help him.

What he wants is impossible, so he prays

for the leg to be restored like magic,

so he can ride away.

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 18 August 2022

Another World

Stuart Payne

Another world was lost tonight

another mind through which we passed

in memory and hope. It’s lost,

and we had hoped that it would last

a little more than this, at least.

But all we were to her is gone,

while all she was to us remains

with us - and so we carry on

in rooms she knew, in preparation,

thankful that our lives had crossed.

And yet a world was lost tonight

and she remains and we are lost.

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 11 August 2022