A Quantum Theory of Grief

Laura Urban Perry

With physics, Planck and De Broglie 
strove to define energy broken 
down to its most elemental: 
a quantum.
Either particle or wave.

An electron on a predictable path 
Or light in time 
can be observed as the other. 
Such duality is difficult 
to weather.

Now you are light.
I am wave.

Perpetual emotion not fixed
in time or space; 

not a particle 
to hold and share with others,
easily described with a story,
beginning, middle, end. 

I undulate.
When low, I drag the bottom,
Then high, race effervescent.

My story = transitory feeling.
No words. 
No reassuring sequence.

More like quietly cupping a cloud 
while it slips through 
your fingers as rain.

The Science

As I grappled with the non-sense of my son’s sudden death, the here and not here, and my experience of grief, I explored quantum physics for rationales beyond faith. Quantum physics describes matter / energy and its behavior. Matter can be simultaneously observed as particle or wave, as in light. The “wave/particle duality” of quantum physics encapsulates the difficulty in defining matter when it assumes a different form through another lens – demonstrated in the “Double Slit Experiment”.

The Poet

Laura Urban Perry is an American poet, artist and designer.  Her fascination with nature, art, science and language has fueled her creative work which has been published in the Amsterdam Quarterly, Poets on the Coast Anthologies and Telephone, an international digital artists game. Laura lives in Seattle and sometimes on an island with no ads. https://www.lauraurbanperry.com

Next poem: Backbone by Jona Rada