See that man with trembling hands
And a distracted look in his eyes
With his head ticking slowly
He is falling and tumbling
Inwardly
Inside himself
Rolling and bumping
Faster and faster
And when at last he falls no more
He shatters and scatters
All across the floor
Gone

                    By Phil Roberts

I close my eyes and I see you
As little more than a babe in arms
With the biggest gummy grin ever
Sitting on my knee and laughing
As you head-butted me in the chest
Pictures I'll never forget

And then the last time I saw you
Struggling to breathe and barely conscious
Tended by your loving wife
We'd said our goodbyes and "love yous"
We'd hugged when we still could
And I watched you dying of cancer

                               By Phil Roberts

One of my year long sophomore subjects will be physics. At first, physics seems to be a menagerie of big, boring universal ideas and immutable laws rendered practically unimportant by their scale.

Peter, ok, let’s call him my boyfriend - just as a place-holder - is working on his “Doctorate in Applied Physics,” degree. “Will you help me with my physics homework?” I asked, hopefully.
“I’m sure we can work something out,” he assures me, wiggling his eyebrows suspiciously.

Peter got to visit the Hadron Collider, in Geneva, this summer. When I FaceTimed him he was as animated as a girl at drama camp. He was all, “proton collisions, Higgs bosons, top quarks and massive particles, bla, bla, bla..”
“That’s ok, I said, “If you’d rather not talk about it, I understand.”

Seriously though, I get it. Physics teaches critical thinking and problem solving. Fluid dynamics and pressure-volume-resistance relationships apply to the circulatory system. Pressure-volume curves can apply to lung function, heat transfer is applicable to frostbite, hypothermia and fevers - nuclear physics applies to nuclear medicine (SPECT, PET scans and radiation therapy and lasers) - yatta, yatta yatta.

But why ME, oh, lord?

Our coffeemaker died this morning - it wouldn’t **** all the water out of the reservoir - c'est tragique. We love our coffee and apparently, we brewed the life out of it. It sat, oddly neglected, in its usually busy spot beneath hanging copper pans. Adieu, faithful friend, you gave your life to a good cause. We’re reduced to using a freeze-dried brew.

Lisa grew up in New York highrises, and she was agog in our garden. “It’s like Versailles!” she whispered, when we first arrived and did the tour - flattering but hardly. It’s a six acre, French, Color Garden. An acre is like a football field without the end zones - so maybe you can picture the size of it as it wraps around the front of the house.

The lawn slopes off gently to circular beds and right-angled parterres. Two staircases lead to a fountain that feeds a rectangular reflecting pool full of lily-pads and lazy goldfish. Lisa and Leong spent hours this summer reading in the only cool spot, a shaded, wisteria-covered pergola, but gardens are best in fall and spring - when in bloom. I’m sorry they didn’t get to see the explosive flowerings - maybe we can come back, someday, for Easter vacation.

We’re leaving for New Haven at the end of the week so I’m slow organizing for academic life. I have 21 new notebooks (three per class or lab) and 60 various, carefully coutured, colored markers and gel-pens. I tried taking notes on my iPad last year but I found I remembered things better when I took colorful notes by hand, highlighting ideas, and pinning them down in my notebooks, like butterflies.

We hung out with a lot of rising college freshman girls this summer and across the board, it’s been fun. Their questions were super random, but super aware - their interests make our bumbling, freshie experiences seem buzzy. I remember being so ground-down the carceral, COVID lockdown of my 10th and 11th-grade years that college freedoms seemed like space travel. I’m excited for these girls.

Peter and I are squeezing in a morning Facetime call. He looked a little tousled and undone, sporting a black, almost blue, bedhead mess of morning hair. With his sleepy, brown eyes and five o’clock shadow, he looked like he just fell out of bed after hours of.. ahem. My usual, unfocused feelings seemed to find a compelling point.

I smiled and sipped my coffee, “What?” he said, self-consciously, upon catching my expression.

“I just can’t wait to see you in person.” I demurred, choosing to focus on this morning’s awful, instant coffee. I tend to chatter when I’m excited by something, but maybe I’m learning the power of silence.

So hot
The amber melted.

Six stick thin legs
Intact

Gossamer wings
Four
Glowing

Abdomen head
Antennae all
Alive

I flight check

Mate

And die.

Coarse granite slabs split the earth
glinting at the fractured sunlight.
Sly winds whip and lash the grass and gorse;
disconsolate skies weep upon the land.

Rain rushes in to bloat the meagre streams,
and gulleys slash the sinewed  clay.
Pulse and sluice.  Erosion fashions
new forms of contoured legends.

Ragged crows snag the horizon
blasted and cursed. Little else
between the walls of weathered stones:
hand-laboured one on one.

The moor muscles its independence,
frowning at the low land,
bragging to the skies
its ancient splendour.