It only takes one weasel

[Amie]

It only takes one fucking weasel

Sometimes the plots are cliched. Facile,
even in real life.

In April 2016, a weasel fell
into the Large Hadron Collider

Six weeks earlier we'd learned I was pregnant
for the first time. We feted this miracle

the usual ways: picked paints, a crib
baby names. We both favoured traditional

Me, Armenian: Araxi, Tahkouie,
Balik, Boghos. You, English.

I used to say, the world's moving to a better place
You'd laugh, sigh. We still have genocides, racism

a growing ozone hole, child abuse, police
brutality. Generic ills, too many to call them

But there was hope, and symbols, signs
sigils: we had Obama, universal

education, reprogrammed T-cells
pandas returned to the wild.

No one forces kids down coal mines anymore.
At least not in the West.

Yes. I'm swinging, from small
to large, general to personal. Still

It was McCartney v Lennon, winning
Getting better all the time.

And then, that fucking weasel.

You know, I've reached out, to Gabriel, Mikayel
to Meghrig, Anahit. And I believe them. I can stop

time, squeeze through the gaps between
quarks and sand-strings. But I can't find

the one that leads me back, to you, me
and that sense of ever-increasing beneficence.

[indar]

Hi Amie,
What a fabulous, intriguing poem. I googled the event and was astounded to find that a lowly weasel did, indeed take down the Hadron Collider. I meditated on that all day---and came up with the analogy (as in Miller's test): a weasel is to the Hadron collider what humanity is to the mysteries of quantum reality. Is the N as ambivalent about our common future as I am? 

I fear for us--I've fallen into global despair. I love this poem that looks clear-eyed at how fallible are the beings that achieved the collider, the discovery of bosun-higgs-- the god particle, only to descend into our current state of dysfunction.

Love this poem--one of my all-time faves.

 

[Tracy Mitchell]

Amie!  Bravo!  I love this poem, the flow the swing, the move from your stunning title through a subtle rampage of emotion.  The personal detail are strong yet understated.  the message is powerful, the writing strong.

I have no nits, no revisions.  I love it as written.  What a wonderfully constructed work.  Instant classic, I think.

T

[Amie]

Thank you, Tracy and indar - that is really encouraging!

Linda, N wants to find her way out of this bizarre dystopian universe that she accidentally got bumped into when the weasel shorted the Hadron, and back to the one where things made sense. So, in that sense, she's not ambivalent - more "get me outta here!"

[Amie]

ps - I edited to change Lenin to Lennon. Though Lenin could work too - seemed a bit too obscure a stretch on reflection

[Sharon Leigh]

Hi Amie,

I love this very much. The tone is amazing, its spirit light yet there is to this a lump in the throat that no one else has mentioned, such a longing and a familiar (to me) all-too-human dissatisfaction with events that brings this nostalgic sheen to our (even relatively recent) memories. I didn't know it was a real story, that a weasel genuinely did fall into the LHC! I love the n blaming current ills on that. Almost a soothing belief. And you got the point across without having to say "Mandela Effect" I just love everything about it. Thanks for sharing.

[Colm Roe]

Just like to add my applause, it's a fab poem.
The poor weasel... such cute little critters, with such an unfortunate name!
I assume he's gone to a different dimension

[Amie]

Thanks Sharon And thanks Colm (you posted while I was writing this reply)

Funny, I hadn't even thought of the Mandela Effect - but I don't know why not, because it's more or less exactly the same thing. Just this time with a weasel at the helm and bigger consequences than Berenstein/Berenstain

2016 was such a crappy year for me, in so many different ways. I started getting superstitious and thinking I'd been cursed. But it wasn't just my personal life, the whole world seemed to be going mad. Brexit and Trump, the rise of the alt-right, Bowie, Cohen, Alan Rickman - seemed not a month went by without losing a hero. And so many things I thought to be true turned out to be false (like, "the world is becoming a better place, we (people) are becoming better, kinder, more tolerant...")

Anyway, yes, it is comforting to blame a weasel - because if a weasel can bump you into a dystopian universe, then the next one might bump you right out again

[Amie]

Just like to add my applause, it's a fab poem.
The poor weasel... such cute little critters, with such an unfortunate name!
I assume he's gone to a different dimension

While sleuthing on your behalf, to discover the whereabouts of the weasel, I learned that there has already been a second weasel! https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... ory-museum

Hmmmm.... November last year.... my luck didn't start to change until 31 December, so this was obviously not the feted saviour weasel... which is just as well, 'cos there's still a lot of weird twilight zone stuff going on that needs to be put right.

[Mark Hoffmann]

Excellent. 

I'm interested to know why you chose to speak to the reader as "you", particularly as that forces you to tell the person you are speaking to stuff they know.

Mark