Robert (Bob) Whelan [USA]

 

Etymology
 
                   The Nobel Prize in Physics 1986 was awarded to jointly to Gerd Binnig
                   and Heinrich Rohrer for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope.
 
It seems like, on one day in Spring, overnight
while peepers are singing and mating,
buds emerge.
Then shortly after, over another night,
buds spread into a canopy of leaves
shading tadpoles in vernal pools.
The refinished table by the window
in my upstairs room can’t do anything like that.
I mean, if you cut a piece of it and examine it
under a scanning tunneling electron
microscope you can see atoms.
If you cut a piece of tree, you see
the same atoms, yet
these bud in the Spring.
What leaves a tree when it becomes a table?
I’ve been thinking about this for some time.
Only I’d rather think less and feel more.
Thinking is more like doing, an armor
that shields one from experience.
Feeling is being, a vulnerable immediacy
unfolding like a growing leaf catching light and air.
The philosopher Democritus introduced the idea of the atom.
Its etymology derives from the Greek word atemnein which means not cut.
Three thousand years later Binning and Rohrer received a Nobel Prize
for seeing them.
Such is the velocity of thought.
Millennia have passed and we’re still
thinking about the same thing.
But experience is
the indivisible energy that causes
a tree to bloom
and allows us
to feel
now.
 
 
Can A Bridge Be Built?
 
Can a bridge be built joining heart with mind?
So compassion is seen as logical.
Where passion won’t render reason blind,
And rational inspires the emotional.
 
Can a bridge be built between body and soul?
Where molecules sway to transcendent music,
As they dance to make existence whole,
And muscle enlightens the body electric.
 
Can a bridge be built that brings hate to love?
Where opposites learn to tolerate,
As acceptance expands through the sky above,
And dark impulses mitigate.
 
Can a bridge be built to bring life to stone?
Its spark the zenith of creation,
Animating skin and bone,
To endure beyond annihilation.
 
Can a bridge be built to span the flow of time?
Conceding its course and all its power.
Flowing from sources so sublime,
Where eternities drift in every hour.
 
Can a bridge be built across the gorge of death?
To pass that height but know no fear.
Without clinging to the final breath,
And say farewell to all that's dear.
 
 
Last Night
 
last night you came
to me in a dream
as an angel hiding
her wings behind her
seemingly afraid to unfold
them into the sky.
you were inviting me
to go somewhere
i yearned to go
but for some reason
i hesitated.
when i awoke,
and for the entire day,
i can think of nothing
except feathers
brushing your skin.
 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Robert (Bob) Whelan is a psychotherapist, professor of Philosophy and Psychology and the Poet Laureate of Rockport, Massachusetts, USA. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Solstice Program at Lasell University. His poems have been published in several anthologies and journals including Ibbetson Street, Drifting Sands, OpenDoor Magazine, Red Barn, The Long Islander, Three Line Poetry, Merrimac Mic, Northeast Coast, and the Lily Poetry Review as well as translated into multiple languages. One of his poems was included in the Lunar Codex, launched by NASA to the Moon and successfully landed in November 2025. This literary project is to initiate a digital archive for the planned lunar space station.  Bob frequently is featured at open mics in Boston, New England and Internationally. He is the founder and organizer of the annual Rockport International Poetry Festival and hosts the monthly open mics for Rockport Poetry and the Gloucester Writers Center. In 2022 he was awarded the Silver Poetry Award “Aristotle” at the Naoussa International Poetry Festival for his contribution to the Advancement of World Poetry.