Uncertainty Principle at Dawn

Catherine Barnett

A poster with mosaic artwork by Stephen Johnson depicts a man with a mustache, beard, red hat, and black and yellow shirt. There is a black three-leaf clover next to his head. The poem, Uncertainty Principle at Dawn by Catherine Barnett, is featured in white text on a blue background.

Uncertainty Principle at Dawn

Come morning I’ll make a list of obsessions
and maybe you won’t still be on it,
only five-dollar bills, telescopes, anonymity
waiting, beauty, silent comedy,
the silent comedy of beauty—
of waiting. Could I forswear

all these things and just crawl back
into the bed you and I once slept in?
What would happen then?
Play any film backward and it’s elegy.
Play it fast-forward and it’s a gas.

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