Rebecca Mennecke
If gravity is a force of attraction,
why does it keep us all so far away
from each other? When Isaac Newton
formed theories of motion, he was alone
at home, avoiding the Bubonic Plague,
the Great Plague, the Black Death
Plague, the Bring Out Your Dead Plague
because that’s all anyone was back then
before vaccines and hand soap and Purell
that’s out of stock anyway. It would be two
hundred years before scientists
determined what bacteria plotted
such a diabolical illness: skin turning black
with blood, filling pores, pouring
onto rat fleas to infect
the next victim. But no one knew
that, back then. Talk about living
in uncertain times. Back then,
there was no twenty second rule, no six
foot rule, no limit one toilet paper pack
per customer rule, only the rules
of physics we call laws
because they created order
from disorder, which the world probably
needed. And Newton made lots of laws:
creating early calculus while his room
was lit by candles instead of electricity,
looking through prisms to study
refractions of colors—signifying
promise—to determine optics, lazing
beneath a tree and thinking how
all motion leads downward
or repels. Infinitesimal calculus
is the study of continuous
change, so what Newton really
hypothesized is a theory of
life because everything is changing:
plane fumes aren’t soaring so high
above ground like they used to,
the rivers in Italy look like water,
real water, & less gas in the sky
from cars mean people can breathe,
and everyone applauds the guy
who works at Wal-Mart because finally,
finally, we all see how his work is good
too, & I have to wonder, sitting at home
like Isaac Newton, quarantined and self-
isolated in self-pity while new
plagues ravage cities where I grew
up, eating everyone in the world whole:
if every action has an equal and opposite
reaction, then the budding growths
on the trees outside my window—
as the sky pours down
my windowsill—well, they must
be the Earth’s form of
balance.
Rebecca Mennecke is the editor of NOTA, and a writer and student in Eau Claire.