Today’s poem is from Holding Patterns: physics & engineering poems, published by The Poets Union.

Magdalena Ball

Six Flavours of Quark

Up, down
strange, charmed
bottom and top,
that’s the six.
You know them; mapped them; found them when no one
else even thought to look.

I see them lined in pretty rows
well, not see as such
too small to see
but it’s almost like seeing.

The sweet reds; sticky greens; cooling blues.
like Italian ices I would lick
quick
as a kid
tongue stained to match.

Their imaginary flavours
conjure childhood
goggle eyed
against something entirely new
unfathomably rich
impossibly sophisticated.

There’s something decadent
in being given a choice
something sexy, even
in giving a mundane, elementary particle
such sensual connotations.