Spectral Bodies
This collection begins with the premise that we are more wave than wall. That to be embodied is not simply to have form, but to fluctuate—across time, temperature, and tension. Spectral Bodies traces a path through this oscillating terrain: from the brightness of snow-covered lakes to the geometry of rainbows, from the deep pressure of metamorphosis to the spiraling force of storms. Each poem fuses scientific phenomena with emotional states, translating thermodynamics, optics, geology, and meteorology into felt experience.
To be spectral is not to disappear, but to refract through memory, through light, through the forces we survive and reshape. Spectral Bodies invites you to enter that folding, to listen to the frequencies of being, and to reflect like ice, like water, like light.
Reflections <> Albedo Effect
This poem draws on the albedo effect—the proportion of solar radiation reflected by a surface.. The factorial identity 0! = 1 becomes a poetic truth: out of nothing, unity. Scientific references to irradiance, radiosity, and spectral distribution reflect the sensory overload of emotional processing.
Shores of Lake Michigan
water flickering with light,
relative afflictions taking flight.
This reflectivity becomes
a fictitious factorial
when we realize we are all one:
0! = 1
This wintertime albedo,
a diffuse reflection
ice to water,
spreading, cooling,
widening the wiring of the body.
The irradiance of life,
the necessary radiosity of being.
Spectral radiation reaching
spectered minds
memories creating cloudy days.
Energy arrives from every direction,
challenging angular calculations.
These wide bands of information
overwhelm—
But with mindful monitoring:
an energetic sundial of the mind.
An awareness is heeded,
a directional integration,
and reflectance
is seeded.
This eruption ruptures constraint
ash spews out,
cooling the climate,
fertilizing the soil.
A clear day begins.
Perspective <> Arc En Ciel
This poem explores the optics of rainbows and their subjective nature through the lens of perspective and personal experience. The angle of 42° is the precise viewing geometry required for rainbow observation, while the embedded equation evokes the complexity of light behavior through refraction and dispersion. The “zero-order glow” nods to a phenomenon of pure light without optical splitting, implying that absence of reflection can still carry profound illumination.
White sunlight moves through foreign bodies
limited luminance creating
perpendicular rays,
crossed and wrayed,
wrested away.
Light turns to water
as it hits the raindrops suspended
in the sky of life—
producing reflections, refractions, dispersions.
Colorwaves emerge
from the mechanism of vision:
at 42 degrees,
an unreachable, untouchable arc en ciel.
sin(2β − φ) = n sin β
Each rainbow is personal
everyone has their own drops,
their own angles.
Light bounces inside a droplet—
back and forth,
back and forth.
Dispersion from varied angles
reduces brightness,
producing multitudes of color.
Beautiful, but
to see the rainbow,
you must feel the sun on your back.
Few turn to face the sun.
No reflection, no refraction, no dispersion
only light.
Only zero-order glow.
Rough <> Metamorphic Rock
This poem invokes the transformation of metamorphic rock as a metaphor for human change. Foliation, shearing, and tectonic compression parallel personal and social pressure, while metasomatism—the chemical alteration of rock through fluid exchange-offers a more subtle, hopeful model for evolution.
When I learned rocks could harden,
I was shocked.
Rocked and racked
by the notion that humans, too,
could be metamorphic.
Not like the quenching carbon in my soul—
but shaped, slowly, under pressure.
Others became hardened—
layer by layer,
crisscrossed in foliation,
jagged from environmental weight,
sheared by forces from all sides.
Sometimes these shifts were tectonic—
immense heat and pressure
creating asynchronous states.
But even then,
transformation remains.
Not by melting and reforming endlessly,
but by becoming
through contact.
Metasomatism.
We dissolve old minerals,
make new ones.
Liquid flows in and out,
atoms move
at elevated temperature.
Assemblages
as alternatives to decay.
Growth.
Rage <> A Potentially Intense Tropical Cyclone
This poem transforms the thermodynamics of a tropical cyclone into an exploration of emotional rage and transformation. The warm ocean surface, vertical convection, and intensification all parallel emotional escalation. The concept of potential intensity (PI)—a storm’s theoretical maximum strength—mirrors the dangerous force of unprocessed emotion.
Hot liquid.
Warmer waters rising.
Heat builds
but the memory of cool water
is buried too deep to surface.
Convection in this confectionary plate—
an easy-bake oven of emotional states.
Thunder gathers from downpours of days past.
Winds whirl.
Direction forms.
Low wind shear
gives rise to high potential intensity.
Entropy spins.
The only extant framework—
body / mind / spirit
is this columnar heat rising
from my ocean’s deep well.
Tears lift
into the verticality of space.
Genesis.
This storm.
Intensification.
Moisture concentrates,
spinning in solitude,
northward, poleward—
entraining energy
through a moving body.
Circulation centers.
Blood boils.
A ring of convection—
a ring of conviction.
The storm’s eye becomes my own.
Rectitude <> The Riemannian Geometry of Life
This poem draws on Riemannian geometry, where curved spaces and manifolds define the structure of reality. The idea that our identities embed into higher-dimensional space evokes how internal and external forces shape the self. Isometric embedding ensures the preservation of form even in transformation, offering a metaphor for resilience. The concept of homeomorphism describes this transformation.
This definition of ourselves—
of each other—
is spacious,
surreptitious.
It’s shaped by the astronomical world
we find ourselves within,
and by the inner folds
that embed us into Euclidean space.
Our manifolds extend,
isometrically embedding
into the terrain of our lives.
Our lines are preserved
even as we collapse into each other.
To know this original nature—
this soul
is to accept the bends and breaks
of consciousness, thought, and self.
Slow movements
carry the curvature.
Twists and folds
create distortions.
But through homeomorphism,
we find home:
shapes shift
but some truths hold.
Rhythm <> Synchronicity
This poem links quantum collapse, neural oscillation, and synchronicity as a multidimensional rhythm of life. The destruction of fixed geometric form mirrors the release of rigid selfhood into fluid connectivity. The brain's electrical activity becomes a shared rhythm, a language of inner and outer synchronicity. The phrase “zero angular momentum” suggests equilibrium: the still point in motion where new realities emerge
Synchronicity undoes the pieces
a geometry-induced collapse
of wave-function,
a letting go of rigid form.
Form becomes wave.
Infinite oscillations
at zero angular momentum
emerge
permutations and combinations
made real through rhythm.
Bands of oscillation
alpha, beta, gamma,
delta, theta
wave through us and around us.
Frequential realities
we can match,
mimic,
shift
within ourselves,
and with each other.