or, approximately: gsphere=G4πR3P/3r2
Who’s to say, really, where the underground deposit
is located, if not for the geophysicists
with their equations, their measuring tools,
geophysicist from the Greek, geo meaning the earth,
our mother, health, life, land, and physic
meaning the way things are, physically,
above the ground and below, blind bodies,
pulling for the surface, begging for comfort, to be quantified,
to be pushed through the equation and out the other side,
like climbing through a cave, a lemon squeezer
they called it in New Hampshire, and when you were through,
you knew that though you might be impure in other ways,
unshowered and telling the occasional lie, at least you were skinny,
too small for the equation to work on you, for, though the numbers
and letters
seem impressive, the equation’s imperfect—it’s impossible to isolate
regional
from residual gradual anomalies, to poke the great lumps in the dark,
pin them like still-wriggling butterflies.
