Night and Day

We cannot see it 
Or feel when it arrives
Even our ears are helpless
In separating this reality
From nothingness
Except we now learn 
That it is not a thing
Or even a million
But the detritus
Cast off in waves
From the heart 
Of beating atoms
Within a beating heart 
And becomes 
A leap of faith
When eyes see the light.


 
Oh, Heisenberg 

I saw a particle
In less than the blink
Of anyone’s eye
Become a wave
Which lit a lamp
And jolted my brain.

There is no being
No material thing
Except what flows
Through you 
As a wave
And takes 
All certainty
With it.

These waves dart
Through the hollows
Of our minds
As castaways  
From electrons
As nothingness
Lights up
Our being
And our sunsets
On Helgoland.
   
Making Quantum Waves

When I sing
Of angels and demons
I am making waves.

When I see 
All that surrounds me
The light is making waves.

When I touch
And enjoy my family
I feel their waves.

As I walk 
The direction I take
Creates waves.

As I think
My mind constructs
Ideas that make waves.

When we march
Toward justice and hope
Knees bend from waves

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Lauren Friesen was raised on a farm in Nebraska and from there went on to a career in poetry, theatre, and education.  He served as Poet-in-Residence for the Seattle Arts Commission and published poems in Poetry Nippon, Mississippi Valley Review, Dark Waters, and Madrona Review. He has also been a production assistant with the San Francisco Opera Company and, most recently, the David M. French Professor of Theatre at the University of Michigan-Flint. His published plays include Rothko on the American painter, and a translation of Hermann Sudermann’s The Storm Komrade Sokrates.  He has also published a number of essays and book reviews.