Poem: Neon (2012)

A fable of love and chemistry.

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Neon

 

I met chlorine yesterday,

An element on the prowl.

The wobbly outer shell of her electron cloud

Is one negatively-charged

Ping pong ball short of eight.

She’s so close to that magic number

She can taste it,

But if she wants the stability it brings,

She needs to find someone

With an electron to share or spare.

Her mother says there’s plenty

Of sodium in the sea,

But all she sees around her

Is hydrogen and oxygen –

Looking to bond, yes,

But not to bond with her.

What about me, she asks;

Is there an element in my life

To fill my outer shell

And make me whole?

I reply with a quiet negation.

She assures me that it’s all right.

Some elements take a bit longer

To form that special bond,

And she should know.

No doubt I’ll be settling down soon,

And everyone will say,

What a lovely compound!

I tell her I’m not the compound type,

And it only throws her for a moment.

No, she supposes compounding

Isn’t the institution it once was;

It’s the twenty-first century,

And the modern element

Can bond around.

But see, bonding’s not my scene in any sense.

She doesn’t know what to make of this –

She looks around confidentially

And supportively insists

That it’s okay

To bond with members

Of the same element.

Maybe I’d like to meet her friends,

The O₂’s?

She doesn’t understand.

She’s looking to bond

Because something in her nucleus

Is telling her she wants to be completed.

Her outer shell is off-kilter

Without that eighth electron

To quiet her thoughts

When she wants to sleep.

I’m neon,

A noble gas

With eight electrons in my outer shell –

I have all the stability I need.

I don’t chase the chemical reactions

That scream through you when you bond,

And no new compounds

Will be born out of me,

But I’m my own magic number.

Send a current through me,

And you’ll be dazzled

By how I glow.