Oh science! I am demeaning you with praise! Science! You've been with me every step of the way! I'm imitating Allen Ginsberg for you,science not for fun! Doing the best I can because it suddenly hit me in the library. What a debt and no one complaining! Science,you're too demure! You unlock the genetic code,and in the same breath welcome me to the stacks and I walk in like a bum who has to pee among journals of the latest news of life itself. dispatches from the front! what a brave thing to keep statistics at a time like this! And making theoretical conjectures and publishing them in this heat! but it's cool in this room,thanks to you. And the minds around me sing humming like a barbershop quartet. Maybe it's the ventilation system, but that's yours too! and the computers! I'm typing like lightning in a fishbowl and your machines are bored with me,science! but not you. Like a maiden Aunt you're glad to see me,I know. Watching from the infinite corners of your eye while I learn to ride my bike while I learn what happens when you eat too many ginger-snaps and drink too much chocolate milk. On the playground I pretend you don't mean much to me,science and it shames me later,all that love! I'm such a tough guy when it's only people's opinions at stake. But I'm shaking in my scuffed black oxfords,science! Where are we? Where are we going? Will you take me with you? I'm sorry I never sent any Christmas cards. I should have come over all those saturdays to mow your lawn, we could have watched TV together in the twilight of that summer in between junior high and high school. If I wasn't so tired tonight I'd call you just to say hello, if I knew your home phone number, if I wasn't so embarrassed if I wasn't afraid of saying the wrong thing after hello.                                msg  6/28/00

Hello Science!