Imagine Isaac Newton wandering
In the long orchard grass, and over him
Branches and the white apple of the moon,
A dream of afternoon’s blue branch, with sun—
Hesperides-apple forever gilt
And burning, twinkling in the apple leaves
Like the stone of the philosophers
That makes the basest metals shift to gold.
Then plunk! a Flower-of-Kent plunges to ground,
And Isaac Newton wonders why an orb
Should not sail up or fly slantdicular;
He ponders how the matter-world is rich
With coaxing power, that the Earth is strong
To call the apple toward its seedless core,
Just as the apple likewise yearns and draws
(Like a tiny magnet) immensities.
And dwelling on the image of the moon,
He muses that a captivating tide
Might splash as far as tree, fruit, and Isaac
Juggling numbers and planetary orbits,
Reflecting (long and long) until the sky
Is stocked with stars, until the Milky Way
Appears, a path for Newton’s reverie,
A delicate and spiral peel of lights
That might have cauled the gleaming flesh of moon.
Half sleeping, he sees the Albedo Queen
Unclasp her silver knife and cut the peel,
Flicking ribbons over her left shoulder
To mark the shapes they fling against the night.
Escaped from Newton’s notes on alchemy,
She is the White Queen of the rose and dove
Who rambles under leafy canopies
That glow with stars and moon inside his head.
He sleeps and dreams his swan, his Christ, his clean
Baptismal drops, his silver-apple bride,
Her face all luring and all gravity,
Her moonbeam fingers flickering in leaves,
Restoring Eden’s apple to the bough.
Marly Youmans is the award-wining author of thirteen books of poetry and fiction. Forthcoming books are: a collection of poems, The Book of the Red King, centered on a Fool, the Red King, and their sundry friends; and Charis in the World of Wonders, a novel about a young Puritan woman set in the 1690’s Massachusetts Bay Colony.