Entropy
The margin of the world
is blurred –
a pale band of light,
where sky fades into sea.
I arrange my books in order of height,
on a bank of cow parsley,
amid the random oscillations
of a cool breeze
and one bee,
among the buttercups and bluebells,
the swash of water breaking on water,
far from the comfort of reversible time.
I sort colour from colour
under the eye of a seagull,
the primrose from the vetch.
Here I stand –
far from equilibrium,
a beetle tickling my neck,
loosening sky from rising tide.
I separate the world –
blue, green, yellow, red,
a momentary system.
The dissolution of rock continues,
indifferent.
Lucy Calder has an MSc in astrophysics and is co-author of a book about the Dark Energy Survey. Her poetry has been published in Magma, The Moth, OWP and Acumen. She works as a private tutor of maths and physics in Northumberland.