I find poetry a valuable complement to science as a lens for exploring existence. Jane Hirschfield expressed this sentiment well:
“Poetry and science are allies, not opposites. Both are instruments of discovery, and together they make the two feet of one walking. Poetry and science each seek to ground our lives in both what exists and the sense of the large, of mystery and awe. Every scientist I know is grounded in curiosity, wonder, the spirit of exploration, the spirit of service. As is every poet.” (Jane Hirschfield, “Poets for Science” exhibit at the March for Science demonstration on Earth Day, April 22, 2017)
And Alan Watts reminds us, "There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately. The whole art of poetry is to say what cannot be said."
Here are a few of my recent attempts to express ineffable insights in the form of poems...
The Space Between the Words
(January 2025, modified from a version published in IBHA Origins, vol. V, number 12, December 2015)
I want to tell you something.
It's been burning inside me,
Aching to get out.
Utterly simple yet most profound.
I have to tell you with words,
Even though I can't.
My message lives in the space between the words.
I write them anyway,
Because you need the words
To hear the spaces.
I want to show you something.
So I take you out under the stars.
Point to the constellations, planets, nebulae, & galaxies.
Point out the vastness of our cosmic tapestry,
And the timeline of cosmic history.
But what I'm pointing to is between the stars.
Or perhaps beyond the stars...
Words fail.
Look closely.
But not too closely.
Between the words.
Between the stars.
Between the atoms.
Between events.
Between the sounds.
Between your feelings.
Between your thoughts.
Then you may hear what I want to tell you.
What you want to tell you:
I am the cosmos.
And so are you.
And we exist in the space between the words.
Listening to Ourselves
(January 2025, modified from a version published in IBHA Origins, vol. V, number 12, December 2015 )
Be still and listen.
The cosmos speaks to itself in a language that transcends words.
Looking at a star
I glimpse a tiny fraction of the ripples it sends out into the universe.
To partially reform its image
In my awareness.
To share with me a little bit of its reality.
Like waves on the ocean or a train in the distance.
The softness of a mossy leaf.
The joy or tears or anger of a friend.
They tell a story.
Just listen.
Layer upon layer is revealed, tracing a thread back…
To story upon story.
Of lives and deaths of stars, of planets, of algae, of people.
Perhaps the cosmos is a story.
Creating a language to tell itself.
And you are a strand in that story.
Just listen.
Who Is Writing?
(June, 2023)
Who is writing,
As I write this?
The small mind
I call "me"?
Or the larger "mind"
That is everything?
They are not the same,
Yet they are not different.
Pacific University Convocation Speech
(August, 2019. Not a poem but plays a similar role of trying to express with words what can't be expressed with words.)
Thank you, Sarah. I’d like to add my warm welcome to all of you, especially those who are new to Pacific University! I’ve been here for 3 years now and I remember very distinctly the moment I decided this was the place for me: I was walking around campus at night, mulling over the decision. I had a very clear and tangible feeling, not based on anything in particular, but still solid and definite, that this is home, this is where I needed to be. I’ve since learned in talking with other faculty, staff, and students (like Fernando), that this is a common experience. Many of us recognize there’s something really special here even if we can’t quite pin down what it is or how to express it.
It’s taken most of the past 3 years for my intellect to catch up and be able to describe the feeling in my heart from that night. Hopefully you’ll discover your own version of it for yourself but I’ll try to articulate it at least partially, so you can have a little head start in accessing the full benefit of this wonderful community we all co-create here.
At the core of it is the word Fernando and I both mentioned – HOME. There’s a sense of community here that is not overt and dramatic, just informal and welcoming. An intangible sense that you belong here - that offers a grounding sense of peace with yourself unlike anything I’ve experienced at any other institution. Want to try something new and different? (just one example from my experience was putting on an astronomy-themed music concert). The common response at Pacific is “Here, I’ll help you. I’ll take time to sit and talk with you about your idea and how to bring it to life. I see you. I’ll help you discover and create who you are, at the same time allowing you to help me discover and create who I am.”
Which brings me to perhaps the most important thing I’ve noticed here: over and over I’ve experienced a willingness in people to let their guard down, to reveal their own fears and uncertainties, allowing us to see what we all have in common. This creates an environment where you’re supported in trying new things, and in not being afraid to fail. And as Fernando pointed out, this willingness to risk failure by reaching outside your comfort zone is very important to the process of finding your path, finding out what makes you come alive.
So my suggestion for all of you, to make the most of the opportunities created by this wonderful supportive environment, boils down to a single word: LISTEN. Of course, I’m sure you always listen to your parents and your friends, and no doubt you will listen carefully and remember everything your professors tell you in class (Haha :o). But I mean more than this obvious kind of listening to what people literally say. I mean something both broader, and deeper than that.
As President Hallick reminded us earlier, our existence here in this moment, at this place, is embedded in a much larger context that includes the land and the people who have lived here for thousands of years, as well as the ecosystem that supports us all. And in fact, we can extend this context even further to the sun whose light ultimately nourishes and sustains us, and even to the distant stars that long ago formed the elements that now make up your body.
In other words, the story you write of your own life is a strand embedded in a much bigger tapestry. You need to pay attention to this broader tapestry to see the meaning of your story and find the clues that resonate and guide your path. So I urge you to carve out space in your awareness to listen deeply, to pay attention to what’s beneath the surface, in order to notice these clues.
It’s amazing what you can learn when you really listen, with all of your senses, to the world in all its aspects. To the voices and expressions and emotions of the people you meet. To your own inner voice (perhaps most importantly of all). To the sounds of birds and crickets and waves. To what a physics equation means: the relationships in the real world that the symbols represent. To the smell of the ocean and the feel of the wind. To the silence of the stars and the twinkle of their light and the patterns and colors of the clouds…
I know you’ll be extremely busy during your college career. But I encourage you to regularly take time to sit under a tree (perhaps in one of the hammocks that are so popular here) and write in your journal, and notice your thoughts and feelings and discoveries from the day. Notice other people and wonder what their thoughts and feelings are… Wander the labyrinth we have here on campus and see where it takes you… Ask interesting questions of the people you meet, and really listen to their answers, to their stories.
I think college at its best is a place where you feel open and supported in asking questions, listening to answers, refining your questions, and letting that process change you. Pacific creates that environment better than anyplace else I’ve experienced, and I hope you will make the most of the opportunity you have as part of this community. One of my favorite memories from my first semester here was a presentation by filmmaker Lee Mun Wah, and I’ll leave you with his words: “We are really only one question away from being connected, from learning about another’s journey. And that one question only comes about when we are willing to be open to hearing another truth outside our own.”
Thank you for listening to me. I look forward to hearing you, and learning from you, during your time here. And once again, welcome to Pacific!
Cosmic Concert - Pacific University October 2017
(Again not a poem, but playing a similar role. This is a script I wrote for the narration of a music concert collaboration between the Pacific University Music & Physics Departments, reflecting what is possible when we combine perspectives from different disciplines to help us listen and experience ourselves as part of the universe...)
1) After "We Know the Way" –
Thank you, Kristen! Being a part of this concert is a dream come true for me. It combines 3 of my favorite things: music, science, and community with incredibly inspiring people… students, and colleagues, and friends.
What we really wanted to do was take you out under the starry night sky, with the Milky Way stretching overhead from horizon to horizon, and sing for you in that space of overwhelming wonder. This didn’t seem very practical given Oregon weather in October. So we’ve tried to do the next best thing of bringing that experience to you, into the nicely climate-controlled environment of McCready Hall. Josh and his tech team have done an amazing job creating that setting for us with images and lights. And I’ll try to add to the context with a few words.
Imagine yourself outside on a summer night, lying on a blanket near Timberline Lodge. Feel free to close your eyes if it helps you imagine. The Milky Way stretches overhead, reflecting off the snow of Mt. Hood. An occasional meteor streaks through the darkness, along with the much slower drift of passing satellites. You hear the sounds of the wind, and occasional murmurs of human conversations in the distance. Sometimes those conversations organize into singing, and the sounds of piano, guitar, and cello, mixing with your visual view so that it seems as if the stars are singing to you. The entire cosmos is singing to you. Curtains of colored light shimmer on the northern horizon, rippling with patterns you can imagine listening to if you could convert those ripples into vibrations of sound. And now as you settle into that space, the following thought drifts into your awareness:
Think of someone you’d like to feel connected to… maybe an historical figure you admire, or a friend who is struggling with something, who you’d like to support. Or maybe someone you have felt a conflict with, that you’d like to reconcile. In any case focus your attention on someone you’d like to connect with.
Now take a deep breath and hold it for a moment. You now likely have in your lungs a molecule of air that was in that person’s FIRST BREATH!! (or for that matter, any given breath they’ve ever exhaled!) That chain of connection to our elders mentioned in the Moana song is not just a metaphor. We are literally connected. And extending it even further, the atoms making up the air – nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc. – have existed for billions of years and have spent some of their time in stars, and in the beautiful nebulas you see in Hubble space telescope pictures, and some of the images you’ll see here tonight – before they were in our atmosphere and in our lungs. Visualize yourself as part of a thread that traces all the way back to the stars, and beyond, to the origins of the universe itself. Another way to say it: We of course have human ancestors. But we also are literally made of stardust. So those stars we gaze at in wonder are our ancestors too.
Take a moment to look around at the other people here with you. Make eye contact if you can and maybe even go out on a limb and smile, acknowledging their presence and acknowledging that there is something it feels like to be each person, just as there is something it feels like to be you. As you listen to the music tonight, try to feel your connection to everyone around you and to all of humanity and to the stars and the rest of the universe, through the shared molecules of air vibrating in your ears that create the music you hear.
I am still a physicist so I have to at least mention a little of the science behind what I just said! Turns out there are about as many air molecules in a lung-full of air as there are lung-fulls of air in our whole atmosphere. So given enough time to mix around (a few years is enough, it turns out), every lung-full of air that you breathe in contains about 1 molecule from any given lung-full of air that anyone else ever breathed out!! (with a bunch of details to consider that might make this not literally true… but still it is certainly true that the atoms you breath in were once breathed out by someone else, and were once in stars.)
So when you feel the vibrations in your ears that we call music, know that some of the air molecules creating each vibration were also in the gasp of elation (or perhaps relief!) the composer of that song must have felt upon completing it. Even if that composer lived a thousand years ago. We’re performing her song using some of her air. And some of those molecules in your ears were also in the exhaled breath of every choir member who has performed that song throughout history. And in every audience member who has heard it, and felt the accompanying emotions.
Our first 3 songs we hope will give you a chance to settle into this space with us. "Bright Morning Stars" takes you into that peaceful, quiet, reflective space just before dawn. "Sure on This Shining Night" conveys the overwhelming wonder of lying out under a dark sky with the stars sparkling overhead. And "Ignea Vis" expresses what I imagine the Northern Lights would sound like if they could sing to us of the fiery forces of nature.
Thank you all for being here to share this experience with us. We hope you enjoy the concert as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together.
2) After "Ignea Vis" –
How many of you have had a chance to experience the aurorae (the northern or southern lights) in person? (show of hands?) As I mentioned before, Ignea Vis expresses what I imagine those rippling curtains of light would sound like if they could sing to us. And in a way, they can. The aurorae are caused by the solar wind: charged particles from the Sun – mostly protons & electrons – hitting our atmosphere, exciting those molecules of air that we breathe, and emitting light of different colors as specific types of molecules drop back down to lower energies. They are mostly visible toward the north pole (or south pole) because they are funneled along Earth’s magnetic field. As the charged particles spiral along the magnetic field lines, they also produce radio waves, just like the waves we use to send music through the air for your favorite radio station (or cell phone signal). So the aurorae are like nature’s radio station. And you can tune into that radio station, just as you tune into your favorite human-made station. Here’s just a little clip of what they sound like… (listen) If you do a google search for “Stephen McGreevy auroral chorus,” you’ll find a whole collection of these sounds with a fascinating variety, if you want to just sit and listen sometime to one of nature’s radio stations.
Now from the lofty heights of Ignea Vis & the fiery forces of nature, we maybe need a reminder not to take ourselves too seriously. This next song provides that reminder. I’m not sure what else to say about it except… I really hope you like pirates.… you’ll see :o) …
3) After "Pirate Song" –
One of the reasons I’m so passionate about creating the kind of “cosmic perspective” frame of mind I hope you’re experiencing tonight is that many of our difficulties – whether individual, or social, or planetary – arise from narrowness of perspective. So it’s useful to have experiences once in a while to help shock us out of our narrow points of view, to remind us that whatever we are experiencing at that moment, it’s never the whole story. That’s what I’d like to do now.
(*slide*)
Take a look at this photo. It was taken by a friend of mine in East Portland. It’s just an ordinary night sky from the street in front of his house. Can you guess what that bright star is? If you need a hint, look in your program and see what our next song is :o)
Yes, it’s Mars, as viewed from Earth, obviously.
(*next slide*)
Now look at this one… similar, different terrain, a little dimmer only one star I can see and even that’s a little hard to pick out, so I won’t make you guess what it is. I’ll just show you
(*next slide, with arrow*)
That’s Earth, US, as seen from the surface of Mars by a camera on the Curiosity rover. Take just a moment to let that sink in.
Everything that anyone has ever thought or felt, enjoyed or worried about, happened there, within that tiny dot, from the point of view of Mars…. That’s not to say that all the things we humans have done -- all your personal accomplishments and joy and suffering -- are not important. They are. But they also all happened on that little speck as seen from Mars.
So, I just invite you to maybe consider this question in other areas of your life. If your entire universe of thoughts and feelings and experiences can turn out to be a speck in a photo taken from the surface of Mars, then what else may not be as it seems?
Of course the flip side of this is that Mars, a speck to us, is an entire world of its own.
(* slide *)
This panorama view from the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars gives a glimpse of that.
(*slide*)
This next slide is also of Mars, taken from a couple hundred miles above the surface by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
It’s also what my tattoo would look like, if I ever get a tattoo :o) A reminder that the same patterns can show up on very different scales – the ridges could be skin, though in fact they are sand dunes on Mars. These patterns were made by dust devils removing lighter surface sand, kind of like a tattoo pen in a way, revealing darker layers underneath. It seemed an appropriate background for our next song, David Bowie’s "Life on Mars" – A reminder that life doesn’t always make sense. Which is ok, because existence itself doesn’t really make sense in any conventional way of thinking.
And the last song from concert choir, a south African greeting song, "Hlonolofatsa", is a way to reground ourselves on Earth after the cosmic journey we’ve been on so far. And a reminder that earth is part of the cosmos – that expanding to this wide cosmic view is valuable because of how it informs our perspective in each moment, and our connections to each other.
** Glowsticks ready !!! **
4) After "Sing Joyfully" –
You can get into cosmic perspective frame of mind by listening to songs like this, or being out at a star party. But it doesn’t have to be big events. Right there beneath the surface all the time, just takes a few seconds. Describe example of walking out from rehearsal the other night and watching full moon rise, knowing intellectually but really watching, in just a few seconds, the Earth is turning. Telling students I’m watching earth turn!! Feeling mesmerized by that awareness.
So I just invite you to notice opportunities like this in your everyday life, to experience a little more of the wonder we are immersed in all the time, just beneath the surface, if we just pause to pay attention, to listen.
5) After "Stars" –
Wow! Listening to that piece I just want to stay silent and point almost. That, is what I want to say, that feeling. But I’ll add just a few more words of reflection to try and integrate everything we’ve experienced tonight. We live in a time when many of us are asking what we can do to help heal the divisiveness in our society. Maybe it sounds naïve but I keep coming back to singing and looking at the stars together. They remind us that what we have in common is much deeper than our differences. Each of us is the entire cosmos in a particular, unique and beautiful human form. And we exist, together, in that space between our differences, between anything we can say in words. That space we FEEL directly when we look at the stars or listen to beautiful music. As you listen to our last couple of songs, and then as you leave here tonight and go back out into your everyday life, I invite you to try viewing yourself as an integral part of a vast and interwoven cosmic tapestry. If you know that whatever you create with each moment going forward into the future is an important strand within that cosmic tapestry, what will you choose to create? With this moment right here, and the next moment, and the next….
Thank you for spending a few of those moments here with us.
And since it looks like the skies have cleared up, if you’d like to spend a few more moments with us, feel free to stick around after the concert and join us for a mini star party with telescopes in the parking lot.