Uncertainty Poem
by Lucia Owen
Near the highway in a corn field in the deep furrow where the plough turned, water holds a crow splashing, another watches, a third flies in – I don’t see it land as I drive by on the way to physical therapy – perhaps it stays suspended mid-flap, particle not wave, waiting to change into a wave, there and not there unless I look again – three crows bathing – are they just particles becoming waves as they splash and fly and splash as I go to sit on the exercise bike, pedal in place, generate nothing, no traction, nothing forward but still time passes, so am I wave or particle while I pedal in place and are the crows particles in a row and does each turn in the puddle make waves, make each a wave so each bird is both as the bike is both particle and wave until someone looks, and will the crows be there on my way back because I look? Uncertainty, the illusion of time and motion – what does that make me, riding in place remembering three crows, matter reduced to visibility, and I am stretched between being and not being and may become real again if a crow looks at me when I drive home past the corn field.
Lucia Owen moved to western Maine over fifty years ago to teach high school English. Until his recent death she was the caregiver for her husband of almost forty-eight years. In her eighth decade she finds that poetry helps her keep on keeping on. Her poetry chapbook All At Once has been accepted for publication.