“Why do you spend all day in bed?”
In about the year 1900,
I would have won this argument
Because William Thomson,
Baron Kelvin of Largs
Ate Christmas pudding
And when the plum stuck
In the sugar bowls of his teeth
Parried with the tobacco dyed
tip of his tongue,
He wondered if an atom
Was like his pudding.
That the positive charge was like
A round of vanilla sponge
And the negative suspended through
Like bits of peel and mince
We know now that our matter
Is more kinetic than dessert.
Electrons must dance or else
But oh that they didn’t!
Then I could lay here
Snowed in by confectioners’ sugar,
Being baked into my blanket
Of enriched dough
By the oven light of the afternoon
Unobligated, by nature, to move