Imagine the heat generated
by Daphne transformed into laurel
and you can begin to feel
what the electron feels
in renouncing its steady orbit.
The new body is a space
humming like a sacristy
or an autoclave,
its language both particle
Daphne was, of course, an ordinary girl:
desires not especially volatile.
She, too, forgot her terror, nodded off
in the glow of a star appearing
to explode for billions of years.
The rest is medical history,
the 'H' off the interstate ramp.
How the wound of her new life healed.
How the heatshimmer shook
her vision afterward.
Particle and Wave
The University of Chicago Press