Poetry Friday: Poetry and science

I arrived at the library yesterday evening to return some books to find Natalie Angier's The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science on the new titles shelf by the front door. Yippee. Started it last night.

We have a homeschool field trip to the vet clinic, the boys are submitting essays for a contest sponsored by the local skateboard club and newspaper to win a skateboard, and the organic inspector comes tomorrow. And today will be a hot one, close to 30 degrees C (over 80F). It may not be summer, but it's definitely summery.

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This one by E.E. Cummings, a lifelong Unitarian, from our out-of-print copy of A Treasury of Great Poems, English and American, selected by Louis Untermeyer, seems appropriate this week. Apologies for the goofy type size; apparenty I can't have Cummings's type arrangement and proper type size at the same time...


O Sweet Spontaneous Earth
by E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
 fingers of
purient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty      ,how
oftn have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

          thou answerest

them only with

                        spring)

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Suzanne at adventures in daily living has the week's round-up. 
Thanks, Suzanne!