Poem: "Science Diction"

dianavilliers

janetmiles

This ingenuity is what makes us human,
the sharp whack of reality against imagination,
ideas flying like sparks from flint.

It’s not all about textbooks and degrees, in the end.
Science diction is less about lectures than
“Let’s go into the lab and make it.”
It’s not so much about
“That’s the way it is,” as about
“That’s funny…”

It doesn’t matter whether you’re building
a transistor or a rocket or a computer
or the manuscript of a book.
The “I wonder…” of science is the same
“sense of wonder” in science fiction,
the plane where “what if?” and “how come?”
orbit the same bright sun.

It’s not so very far to go
from science to fiction and back again,
a slingshot maneuver of the mind.