Quantum Realm

When I saw that one book at the end of the rack,
I must tell you, in truth, I was taken aback.
Quantum Realm was the title, deep physics the call;
quite removed from Walt Whitman, Shakespeare and Jean Auel.

It was calling to me for in physics I sing;
as a graduate student, research is the thing.
For my thesis I had to delve into the wee;
that’s the realm of the atom that makes you and me.

(Everything would be more accurate, I must say;
  atoms make all there is, from Formica to hay.
  And the science of atoms is quantum, all right,
  which is why Quantum Realm on the shelf caught my sight.)

But a red flashing sign hung above this good book;
when I read it I gasped and my noggin I shook.
It cannot leave the library!--it did forewarn;
when it claimed it was magic, I felt full of scorn.

I was greedy for Realm so I started to scheme;
it was like I was part of a CIA dream.
There I was like a spy thieving book from the shelf;
yet when I made it out I was proud of myself.

But the world I was used to was not to be had;
I was happy all right, but I also was sad.
I was now in the quantum realm--that’s what I feared;
quantum leap I had made to the world of the weird!

In this world there are things that can give you a scare;
when I looked to the left I saw me over there.
The duality of things in quantum's milieu
is at odds with the common sense we are used to.

For a time I knew not where the heck I was at;
I saw waves of electrons and Schrodinger’s cat.*
And electrons behaved like a particle beam;
in the world of the wee things are not what they seem.

So I scurried on back with the book firmly gripped
as I ran into neutrons and just about tripped.
Lithe electrons were whizzing en masse blue and red,
and I noticed myself, again, running ahead.

It was like I was pulled from a Twilight Zone run
when I found myself back where the heist had begun.
I put back Quantum Realm for I knew it was wise,
and was glad to be back in the world the right size.


40 Lines
Anapestic Tetrameter
Writer’s Cramp
11-30-15
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*A cat imagined as being enclosed in a box with a radioactive source and a poison
that will be released when the source (unpredictably) emits radiation, the cat being
considered (according to quantum mechanics) to be simultaneously both dead and
alive until the box is opened and the cat observed.

In the quantum world (the world of the atom), things are so bizarre that it can
be likened to magic, more or less.