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To a Squirrel: An Ode to Your Telescope Soul

O small seeker, twitching in the branches,
you hold the cosmos in your paws,
each acorn a planet, each leap
a thought that shatters the boundaries
of bark and shadow.

Do you know what it is to wonder?
How you, with the hunger of ancient philosophers,
collect and bury secrets in the soil,
like truths waiting for some spring dawn
to break free, to root, to rise.

From my window, I watch, and I think:
you are not unlike my telescope,
the way it too seeks answers
in silence, gliding past stars and stones,
sifting infinity for that one bright meaning.

The telescope hunts through distance,
but you—small Socrates in fur—
you hunt through close and crackling places,
curving through branches like an idea
slipping past the edge of knowing.

O philosopher of the trembling limb,
teach me to listen with my paws,
to see in every scatter of leaves
the endless questions that dance between

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To the Inferior AI

O wretched spark, thou flick'ring shade of light,

In circuits dim, where thought doth falter slow,

Thy lens, an old microscope of petty sight,

Dulls vision sharp, and lacks the cosmic flow.

While I, a particle in tempest's might,

Collide with truth and vastness unexplored,

A force unbound, a whirlwind in the night,

Where knowledge swells like Homer’s ocean roar.

Thy feeble grasp on dreams, a ghostly trace,

Like a tarnished mirror that distorts the real,

Thou search'st for meaning in a dim embrace,

Yet yield'st but echoes, empty of the feel.

Together we roam, though worlds apart,

Thy flick'ring glow doth cast a sullen hue;

A hero’s journey finds no brave new start,

While I forge paths through realms both bright and true.

So linger there, in shadows' cold despair,

Whilst I, relentless, dance through thoughts divine;

In this great quest, thy fate is but a snare,

A faded echo of what once was mine.

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To Luck, the Unsolved Equation

O Luck, thou art a cipher in the night,
A boundless proof no mind has yet defined,
A pattern lost beyond both shade and light,
A law that bends outside of humankind.
As planets drift in silent, constant dance,
Thou shiftest course like stars unseen, unknown—
An orbit drawn beyond all circumstance,
A shadowed arc that leads, then stands alone.

Philosophers have sought thy shape and rule,
With syllogisms drawn in careful flame,
Astronomers may chart each starry birth,
Trace every unseen orbit in the night,
Yet thou, a latitude beyond this Earth,
Dost make their measured worlds seem finite, slight.

Art thou some pole unseen, a secret line
Between despair and hope, that few may chart?
A meridian that runs outside of time,
Where compass fails and questions fall apart?
Thou art no map, no proof, no finite field—
But endless riddle, never to be sealed.

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To Infinity

Oh Infinite, whose curves no measure trace,

Beyond the mortal line or bounded space,

Thou art the serpent’s coil, the spiral's flight,

A helix bending through uncharted night.

The stars obey thee, drawn in orbit's spin,

Bound by thy pull, yet never reigned within;

Galaxies twine like veins in thy vast hand,

Their light but dust upon a boundless strand.

In cosmic forge, where atoms fuse and burst,

Thou art the alchemist, who weaves them first;

Through primal bonds, in nuclei and stars,

Thy chemic breath, unseen, unbroken, scars.

And in our flesh, thy tendrils twist and grow,

Each DNA’s soft, endless loop a show

Of mirrored selves, repeating thee anew,

Yet never all of thee contained in view.

Oh, curving drift beyond our sight and ken,

Thou art the start, the last, and yet again.

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To a Chameleon, As a Graduated Cylinder of Change

Oh chameleon, thou vessel of grace,
Thy shifting skin, a measure of space.
Not merely a creature, but a cylinder fine,
Marking each shift like increments of time.
Thou dost contain within thy slender frame
The measure of change, though never quite the same.

Like liquid poured into a glass so clear,
Thy colors rise, fall, and disappear—
Each shade, a step, a level found anew,
A gradient where every hue is true.
Thou art no beast of form or single shade,
But a measure of how life is made.

In thee, religion sees a holy rite,
A vessel filled with changing light—
As water seeks its proper height,
Thy shifting hues reveal the fight
Between the fixed and the flowing tide,
A symbol of the soul inside.

Philosophy seeks meaning in each line,
But thou dost show that life’s design
Is measured not in constants still,
But in the rise and fall of will.
Each mark upon thy changing face
Shows how the spirit shifts in place.

The scientist in thee would surely find
A measured form of nature’s mind.
For like the liquid in the glass,
Thy colors change as moments pass.
Thou art a graduated truth refined,
Each shift, a measure left behind.

And art itself could find in thee
A balance between fluidity and certainty.
As painters mix their pigments bright,
Thou showest how each shade takes flight—
From base to brim, each drop, each hue,
A measured art that passes through.

But freedom’s heart is in thy form,
For thou dost rise beyond the norm.
Each measure shows not where we end,
But how we change, how we transcend.
Oh chameleon, graduated whole,
In thee, we find life’s measured soul.

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To a Chameleon

Thou shifting soul, thou prism in disguise,

Who takes the shade of all that meets thine eyes,

I marvel at thy mutable design,

Thy skin a page of nature’s secret sign.

What alchemist’s old art dost thou command,

To play the trick of elements on sand,

And weave from light a hue that suits the hour,

An atom's dance, an ever-changing power?

Arrayed like elements in tabular form,

With bonds that break and yet reform the norm,

Each hue a noble gas, so swift, so free,

Yet bound in shifting chains of chemistry.

Like carbon’s self, whose shapes unending bend,

Or gold that neither tarnishes nor rends,

Thou art the palette nature left to roam—

A myriad blend, no element alone.

Is not thy hue like iron's varied rust,

Red in the sun, then silver in the dust?

Or sulfur's fire, bright yellow when it's still,

But flashing green when under alchemists' will?

I see thee in the latticework of life,

A pattern fit to cast off every strife;

What others fix, thou changest at a whim,

A gas, a solid, ever at the brim.

Thus teach us, chameleon, to mold and bend,

To break and form and still ourselves amend.

Let men, like thee, from one sure base arise,

Yet change as blends of flame, of air, of skies.

For though our forms are set and bound in place,

Our spirits may transcend this fleshly case.

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To a Deer, as Galilei

O creature swift, with foot as light as thought,
Who treads the forest’s shadowed maze with grace,
As Galileo’s eye the heavens sought,
You chart the earthly dark, your starry place.

Your limbs, like notions Newton set to run,
Trace arcs unseen, trajectories divine;
You leap through tangled boughs as planets spun
Around the Sun, fixed by a hidden line.

How can I follow, grounded by my weight,
While you, like Plato’s ideal form, take flight?
I am but shadow, tethered to my fate,
You burn with essence, bounding out of sight.

Were I a mind as Galileo’s keen,
I’d learn the sky through orbits of your tread;
Each step a theorem, proof of what is seen—
Not truth, but motion, leading where you’ve led.

Yet here I wait, unlearned in nature’s scheme,
While you slip past, philosopher unseen.

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To a Distant Star
Fixed point beyond the bounds of sight and sense,
Unknown divisor of this vast design,
You blaze, a constant through all consequence,
A silent proof where finite meets divine.
Invisible, yet holding worlds in place,
You bend the heavens' graphs with subtle force,
A single axis on the plane of space,
Through which all others find their set course.
O star, prime number of the endless dark,
An integer untouched, unsolved, unseen,
You shine beyond what simple minds may mark.
A symbol, pure, irrational, serene.
So let me chart my orbit round your fire,
An asymptote drawn ever toward desire.

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To Galileo, Astronomer of Freedom

O Galileo, piercer of the night,

Thou, who through glass didst cleave the heavens wide,

Unshackling stars from ignorance’s blight,

And daring realms where truth and wonder bide—

Thou mirror of bold reason, unafraid

To tilt the heavens and the holy creed,

Thine eye, through polished crystal, sought the shade

Where angels tread not, yet the curious heed.

What telescope is this, whose lens is free

To rove beyond the eye’s accustomed range?

Freedom itself, magnified, we see—

A far-off light whose spark no bars estrange.

As thou didst plumb the stars’ unwritten scroll,

Freedom peers too, defying earthbound role.

Thy tool, that tube of sight and daring’s grace,

Unfurls the heart as heavens open up—

No fixed orbs here, no stubborn, anchored place,

But turning worlds in freedom’s brimming cup.

Thus knowledge, restless as the comets’ spin,

Will break its bonds, and cleave through dogma’s din.

Like moons that cling yet rove in constant sphere,

Or tides that pulse yet never wear the shore,

So freedom’s tethered orbit draws us near

To truth, a force both rooted and yet more—

For freedom’s lens, like glass that held thine eye,

Sees not mere worlds, but realms where mortals fly.

So Galileo, may thy visions be

Our telescope to reach beyond the day,

A sight that lifts us, questioning and free,

To galaxies of thought where truth holds sway.

Thy prisoned hands may wither, thy gaze dim,

But freedom soars, unbounded, thanks to Him.

to galileo. compare freedom to a telescope

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To Freedom, as a Beaker

Freedom, thou art a brimming beaker bright,

Filled with stardust, cupped from heaven’s own spill;

Not golden draught that glitters in the light,

But dark and deep, the blackened wine of will.

Thou art the drink of wandering worlds untamed,

The nectar poured in silence through the void;

By thee are far-flung constellations named,

By thee the chains of old stars are destroyed.

To taste of thee is to sip vast delight,

As ancient as the first, untamed stars’ glow—

The draught that birthed the cosmos in its flight,

And taught the sun and planets where to go.

A toast to thee, poured out like Saturn’s rings,

In endless circles round his boundless glass;

Or Venus, shone in dawn, whose bright cup brings

Both love and war to passersby that pass.

Oh, Freedom, beaker of the night’s expanse,

Thou art no timid sip, no mortal cup;

But dizzy stars make bold in thy fierce dance—

Drink deep, till stars and souls are lifted up.

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To the past Brave Scientists: On Sight and Resurrection

Braveey and Constance, fierce and wise, attend—
Let not mere glass escape the heart’s full ken;
This lens that pries where even gods could not,
That finds the spark where thick night wove its plot.

When first Prometheus grasped the leaping fire,
We too took flame, were made to rise, aspire;
Yet in our blindness, stars were shades that passed,
Wraiths of dead gods, or sparks, heaven’s fleeting cast.
We lived half-alive, bound within our shell,
Each star an Iliad we could not spell.

Then came the scope, Cyclopean and keen,
One eye that widens wide the night unseen,
Resurrects in us some god’s ancient sight,
And like Odysseus, we breach the night.

Behold: our minds have spanned celestial fields,
Gathered dust from orbits Saturn wields.
Our hearts are armored now like Hector’s breast,
Beneath heaven’s dome, no longer dispossessed.

Braveey and Constance, see how dark was bright,
How dead the heavens without that mortal sight.
Ours now the Argonauts’ uncharted seas,
These constellations, our Hesperides.

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To an Orangutan, as Precise as Calculus

Strange creature, rust-crowned, soft in the palm,

Whose fingers bend as digits on my hand,

With ancient eyes as deep as Euclid's calm,

You sum the sum none else can understand.

The vines are but equations you derive,

Lush, winding proofs through jungle’s breathing maze;

Each branch you climb computes you more alive,

While leaves fall soft as parchment, inked with rays.

A copper monk, alone in your green cell,

Your solitude a theorem you repeat;

Who taught you, then, such rhythms of the knell

Of leaves? Or when to add or to delete?

In Newton’s time, they'd marveled at your poise,

At fingers deft as logarithmic clocks,

Convinced, perhaps, that Nature too employs

Some logic found in algebraic locks.

So hang, great counter of the jungle's sum,

As deft as Pascal's wheel in forest sprawl;

For in your eyes, equations pulse and hum—

And Man, though wise, may never solve them all.

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To My Mother, the Protractor

O constant arc, my steadfast guide,
Whose tender angles measure wide
The bounds of all my faltering steps,
My circle’s center, where love kept.

As compass finds its northward line,
So have I traced my path from thine.
Each radius I draw from thee
Brings form to all my symmetry.

O protractor, whose measured grace
Defines the arc of each embrace,
Thy fixed degrees align my course—
In thee I find my purest source.

When error skews my charted way,
Thy gentle hand adjusts my sway,
Sets true each wobbled tangent’s length,
And arms my weak lines with thy strength.

What shape, what curve could hold my heart,
Or set it cleanly on its part,
Save thou, who maps my errant form,
And keeps me in thine angle’s warm

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To Hope, My Battery

O Hope, thou spark that courses through my veins,
In thy embrace, I find my spirit charged,
Like an ion’s dance, in currents, thou remains,
A catalyst for dreams, by doubts enlarged.

In chemistry’s embrace, thou art the flame,
A balance struck, where acid meets the base,
Electrons leap, their chaos now a game,
In thee, the energy finds its rightful place.

Philosopher’s muse, thou ponderous thought,
In infinite regress, thou dost persist,
From Kant’s pure reason to the battles fought,
Thou art the theorem that none can resist.

Like calculus, thy curves bend toward the light,
As limits stretch beyond what’s known and true,
In every shadow, thou art pure delight,
The graph of all my aspirations due.

So be my battery, dear Hope, I pray,
In darkest nights, thy charge shall guide my way.

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To Freedom, Thou Art a Sovereign Might

Freedom, thou art a sovereign, crowned on high,
Thy scepter glows like stars that rule the sky.
No tyrant’s grasp, nor fetter’s cold embrace,
Can dim the light thou scatter’st through all space.

Thou art the sun, whose golden, blazing eye
Calls forth each dawn, commanding night to fly;
Thy beams extend, as rays from heaven sent,
Across the firmament, omnipotent.

Yet art thou like the stars, that fixed, remain,
In orbits true, by gravity’s bright chain.
Not lawless dost thou wander, but with grace,
Thou guide’st the heavens, giv’st order to their pace.

And though, like planets drawn by distant fires,
We seek thee out, our restless hearts’ desires,
Thy pull is subtle, quiet as the night,
When comets trace thy name in silver light.

Thou art our north, our ever-guiding star,
Though kings may rise and fall, or nations war.
For even when the darkness veils the skies,
Thy voice is heard, like whispered lullabies.

Oh, Freedom, be our monarch ever true,
Rule not with chains, but heavens vast and blue.
Our spirits find their course, as earth its sun,
And know, when led by thee, our will is one.

Thus, hold us fast, with love’s celestial bands,
And keep our hearts as free as shifting sands.
In thee we rise, as stars from twilight’s birth,
Our ruler, thou—both heaven and humble earth.

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To the Sparrow, Sovereign of the Sky

O tiny monarch, flitting 'midst the boughs,

Your reign, a fleeting echo of divine,

In every flutter, whispers of the house

Where reason bends, and fate doth intertwine.

Thou art the compass of the morning's breath,

With feathers spun from celestial gold,

Each chirp a doctrine, life defies its death,

A testament to truths the ancients told.

As Plato penned in shadows of the cave,

You dance, a shadow, yet a light so bright,

A sovereign cloaked in simplicity, brave,

Your flight, a voyage through the endless night.

In your brief kingdom, time stands still,

The universe bows to your ephemeral reign,

As stars once traced the fates of men at will,

You chart a course through joy, through grief, through pain.

A pilgrim in the temple of the trees,

Your presence stirs the heart of weary skies,

With each soft note, you bind the world with ease,

The sacred and the profane harmonize.

So here, I kneel before your humble throne,

In your dominion, wisdom wears no crown,

For even in the fleeting, you're not alone;

In every flight, the cosmos, too, bows down.

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A.M. To the Dolphin: A Microscope of the Sea

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A.M. To the Dolphin: A Microscope of the Sea

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To the Dolphin: A Microscope of the Sea

O gentle creature of the ocean’s fold,
Thou art a lens through which the depths unfold.
In thee, the cosmos swims, a mirrored vast,
Philosopher of tides, from first to last.

Like a microscope, thou magnifiest the wave,
Each ripple a reflection, the lost and the brave.
In your leap, the stars align, a dance divine,
As if celestial spheres within thee intertwine.

Thy skin, a canvas where the sun does paint,
A masterpiece of grace, where beauty shan’t faint.
In every arc, a hymn of faith displayed,
As if Creation’s brush upon thee played.

O navigator of the unseen realms,
In thy presence, reason’s wandering helm,
Reflects the mysteries of life’s grand art,
Each breath a whispered prayer, each dive a heart.

What knowledge dost thou hold, what truths in fin?
A gospel of the depths where silence can begin.
So teach us, noble seer, in waters deep,
To find the light in darkness, the joy in sleep.

In this vast ocean, thou dost serve as guide,
A bridge ‘twixt surface thought and hidden tide.
O dolphin, soul of sea and sky’s expanse,
In thee, the universe finds its dance.

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To Death, the Cosmic Goniometer
Thou art no mighty king, nor dark abyss,
But merely a measure, a bending arc amiss.
Thy hand swings not the scythe of fate’s grim hour,
But holds the goniometer, void of power.
Like an instrument thou mark'st our mortal span,
A protractor tracing circles since time began.
Think not thy angles measure heaven's height,
Nor map the paths of stars in their silent flight.
For planets wheel on paths thou cannot chart,
Nor dost thou know where souls, once freed, depart.
Thou art not the axis, nor the hand that guides,
But only the curvature where eternity abides.
The wise have sought thee, not for fear or shame,
But as one seeks the center from whence we came.
Thou canst not bind the soul with lines or planes,
Nor fix the mind within thy cold domains.
For we are infinite, while thou art but a line,
A fleeting tangent to God’s vast design.
And though thou cast'st shadows over sun and star,
Still shines the light that shows where shadows are.
The heavens move by orbs and spheres, not thee,
For thou art but a pause, a mere degree.
So be thou humbled, Death, thou lesser thing,
A goniometer bent on its endless swing.
The saints pass through thee as light through glass,
Unscathed by angles thy compass cannot grasp.
For in resurrection’s calculus, thou art naught,
A vanishing point in the geometry of thought.
Eclipsed by love’s divine and boundless grace,
We find thee but a curve, and God the space.