Can Poetry Do What Science Can't?

      At the coast not too long ago, I watched, mesmerized, as waves pounded through a hole in ocean rocks with an irregular, asymmetrical explosion of white spray. What could be throwing those waves? I understand the force of water over a waterfall, but this water was coming from a flat surface. Whither such force? Something was pushing the waves from afar, flinging them with fury and strength – an angry Neptune, maybe, on the other side of the ocean, slinging those waves around. I could even see God doing it, though it's hard to imagine that overworked deity having to stand at the ocean's edge pushing waves one after the other.

      Okay, so, all right. I'm an educated 21st-century woman, and I know that the moon makes tides. But what does that say? The moon? Are you crazy? You're telling me it's the ocean yearning for the moon, leaping towards it again and again, only to fall back each time in frustration and despair, like a dog, enfenced, trying to escape? I could make up a myth to give your explanation understanding, but just to look at the ocean and know the moon is causing that force –? Not really. Your explanation doesn't tell me anything.

      I understand the thinking of pre-Galileo days. Of course the world is flat, not only because we can see its edge but because there has to be a flat box there to hold the water. If the world were round, the water would roll off. That's not hard to see. Do an experiment: Take a ball and try to make water stay on it. If the ball were big enough, a dab of earth would stay there, but no matter how big the ball is, water won't stick. Anyone can see that the world is flat.

     So then you tell me that there's a thing called gravity in the center of the earth that exerts a pull on everything, including water, that makes it stick to the surface. Oh, yeah? What do you mean, "a pull"? Show me.

      And so you take a magnet and iron files, and you tell me that gravity is like a magnet in the center of the earth and everything in the world has something like iron in it that responds to gravity like files to a magnet. So, okay, I can see that, but why, then, don't the stars fall through the sky onto earth?

      I was hiking with a friend once among the golds and scarlets of big-leaf maples and viney maples, the subtle purples of dogwoods and the pale lemon of alders, mesmerized by the colors as much as by the waves at the ocean. My friend, a scientist, marveled equally at cause-and-effect explanations. "It's a gene," he said excitedly, a gene that is responsible for this glorious revolution of color. 

      I tried hard to internalize the information, but it wouldn't stick. After all, what is a gene? It's the thing that gives me a short stature and the viney maple its fiery autumn color, but what does that tell me? I could make a myth about genes as I did about the moon and know no less. If our science explains mysteries, I need the poetry to explore the wonder.