Standard Model Playground

Leptons charge into the playground in Planck time –
muons, taus and better known electrons slither,
slide, run, in full zest as though they are all that matter.
In proper time and space a flow of quarks appear,
and charm the leptons with rival and strange flavors,
sometimes by moving up, sometimes down,
but always with positive impulse.  They are known
to spin tales in an urge to compose a new playground,
small enough for fermions.
And so today cryptic W and Z bosons
shuttle between them and the leptons
to rework the design – they show waves and matter
must waver and adjust to the new architecture.
Then, as they take a collective breath,
Higgs enters with low energy, unobtrusively, quiet,
only to disappear as the new playground is settled.

© Lavinia Kumar

Higgs boson-like particle discovery claimed at LHC

Italian Higgs boson research body bears brunt of government cuts

Lavinia Kumar lives in New Jersey. Her poetry has appeared in several publications, in the US and UK. She writes a blog for her brother’s seniorsmagazine.org, based in Portsmouth, NH.

Higgs Moment

Not a thought nor an ought in my mind.
This is the moment Satan cannot find.
Blake’s prophetic admonition;
Faust’s wish for the moment to last.
Reading is telescope, microscope, looking glass.
I can see pointlessness waver and gain mass.
Words bind me to this space and past.
The future will erase us all,
replacing with unknown scrawl,
fill the vacuum Nature so detests
that we are forbidden,
though driven to our rests –
this moment, the glimpse of that prophecy,
welcoming embrace of that destiny.

© L S Bassen

New Data on Elusive Particle Shrouded in Secrecy

L.S. Bassen won the 2009 APP Drama Prize & a Mary Roberts Rinehart Fellowship; 2011; She is a Book Reviewer for brooklyner.org, the rumpus.net, and press1, and has been a finalist for Flannery O’Connor Award.