The Difference Between Science and Poetry

The lights are still out in the boys’ room, though I’ve been up walking the beach for hours.

A king size bed is pretty large for one person, and laying beside a pillow isn’t very satisfying.

A waning gibbous moon was gliding toward the western horizon as I walked the moist sand in wet shoes.


There is something calming about the sound of the waves, the steady slow beat of its crash ending in the drawn out whoosh of the sand drinking in the diminishing flow. It is like the heartbeat of the world... like, as a child, I heard my father’s heart beating his salty blood in his chest. Walking along the ocean’s edge I can hear the natural rhythm of the world’s pulse, beating to a greater heart.

I know the waves are caused by the accumulated push of breezes and winds over thousands of miles of water, and suddenly squeezed and concentrated from its dark depths to the slanted shore along this coast of North America.

But, as it is with most scientific explanations, there is something missing, a lack of whole truth in the explanation. Not that the explanation isn’t true. It is just incomplete.

Science loves precision, fine details of measurement, the inclusion of all variables, from the wind and moon to the way the way electrons tend to spend more “time” rounding the oxygen atom in a water molecule making them cling to each other,
and to sodium, and all the other carefully monitored and explained stuff floating in the sea.

But science’s precision avoids poetry. And there is often greater truth in poetry than is found in the periodic table.


The stars were out, the air was cool (38 F), a breeze was blowing, my hands were cold, my heart heavy.

Ever read any Walt Whitman? There is a poem of his that describes this disconnect between science and the truth found in beauty:

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.


It is strange to be mourning my marriage when I know, deep in my heart, that it simply isn’t any good. It’s like loving something beautiful that has died... died, decayed, gone.

I loved that child I buried 15 years ago, but I would not enjoy seeing what his little body has become by now. The beauty in him is what is left in my heart and in what now resides in eternity.

I love my wife. But, being brutally honest with myself, we are no longer compatible. When we met we were smoking pot, drinking beer, partying quite a bit. She worked hard, I fumbled around with various harebrained attempts at earning a living. In the end I grew up. I went through six years of college, getting a master’s degree in education.

My taste in music expanded. I came to love not only the classic rock of my teen years, but learned to love jazz, bluegrass, motown, Indian (Shankar, etc.), folk, blues, and classical. I haven’t been able to get into hip hop or rap, which I’m told is accurately spelled starting with a silent “C”.

As I walked the beach this morning my iPod lent the spiritually choral strains of Arvo Part Te Deum as a sound track for my thoughts, watching the foam of the crashing waves catch the light of the moon, the rippling water sparkling with reflections of stars who’s light began streaming toward this sad soul thousands of years ago.

This is not music my wife enjoys.

She does not enjoy many things I do, or at least the way I do. Art, church, theology, science, our children, our marriage.

I have changed. So has she.

Though I would have loved to work hard to find each other, to find each other’s hearts, minds, spirits, she has moved on, finding someone else who is living a life closer to the one she prefers.

I look in the mirror, and I see an old guy I barely recognize. I haven’t cut my hair since August and its shagginess, the grey in my beard, the bags under my eyes, it must be someone else on the other side of that looking glass.


The cell phone just chirped. I snatched it up, hoping it was a message from her. It was only singing out to tell me that it had finished recharging (I’m still unused to it, as this is only the third day I have had it).

That is a good example of my heart. I sit here in this hotel room chair, tapping away at a keyboard, pondering the differences between my wife and I and how I know we really cannot find each other again, and even if we could, my trust in her is so shattered that even if we glued it all back together with care, counseling, and kindness, it would forever show the deep cracks and chips of our mistakes.

Yet, at the thought she might be contacting me makes this rebellious heart of mine to leap at the hope of hearing from her.

When we get home tomorrow there will be empty places where she had removed a piece of furniture, taken away a family photo, cleared out a shelf of books, removed clothing from the closet.

I’ll have to do something about those empty spots. Move stuff around, rehang pictures, shuffle furniture here and there, redistribute contents of cupboards.

I’m going to be OK. I really am. I know it. But my breath gasps in starts and stops, my heart races, and tears spring to my eyes.

She hasn’t the commitment to marriage, to adoption, that I have.

That is a truth. It is the sort of measured truth science could explain by listing in neat columns her actions, her views, her lies and betrayals.

But it doesn’t convey the destructive poetry I feel of watching this forest fire in my heart consume 28 years of looking at a forest I thought was very different from the one that was actually growing there.

Well, the sun has come up...


I’m going to go check on my boys now.

.........................

Addendum: Brenda is sending emails, sounding very apologetic. I've got mixed (very) feelings.

We went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium this afternoon. The boys liked it. Here are some pics...

Teeth!

Those stretched penny souvenirs

Shark!
Shark!

Seals

Why, I otter...

...stick my nose on the glass!