Einstein called it light in a box. His colleague Bohr drew
pictures of the box on his blackboard in chalk and left it there until
after he died, until most of his friends no longer knew what it meant.
I think of it in the morning now when the first of the sunlight
lights up what is around me, slowly shining on everything.
You can watch the light do what it does early in the day.
It eases out. The modest yellow flowers show up and the grass,
the blue shirt I have on, the lavender plants in the garden
I planted to keep evil way. Another day in an expanding universe
in which matter and space move in arcs and curves, the roses
in the desert are opening up before sunrise, pedals spreading out,
roadrunners moving faster than anything in their path, rabbits
waking early ready for winter again. I think Einstein figured
out exactly how energy and matter moves, particles lighting up
as they do but he could not explain why or for what. Even now
everything we don’t know is exploding here, everything we know by heart,
the tiny pink poppies, the purple heather, the tiniest bird.