Poem

Discovery


I sight down the long lines of history.
They converge in the distance
at the birth of ideas.
From here, the accomplishments of antiquity
seem inspired, unique, the work of genius:
alphabets organizing tribes into nations,
geometry forging truths from the unseen,
perspective revealing the vision of the Renaissance.

I marvel at how such milestones
leverage civilizations, set nations apart,
and how these people with so many demands
on themselves just to survive, managed moments
of discovery. They must have been
special, chosen, few.

Not so.

Discovery, the excitement of knowing
something for the first time
belongs to each of us, always.
Meeting these moments of revelation ourselves
is no less profound than encountering them
on those landmark days. I saw it today:

Jim came home from class
with his paper still in his hand.
Miss Humphrey, in thirty minutes, had taught him
the principles of one-point perspective, that skeleton
of our perception on which we construct
and hang the natural appearance of the world.
That there existed a formula
for recreating depth on demand was a discovery.
It never existed for him until today.
This pivotal development in art and science
was discovered and practiced for the first time
on his earth today, in fifth grade, in Afton.
Will the world ever be the same?


February 1994