Anomalies of Water

Phase Anomalies

Water melts at a high temperature … liquid ice
inspires concern and delay, delights the ignorant
and the adept;

water boils at a temperature high enough to destroy
the world, this one, the one you’re standing in

while its critical point involves the lesser gasses
their febrile machinations anguished in the night,

the night of stable crystals and amorphous mineral structures,
this night, the one you are traveling though, you who care,
careening;

the thermal conductivity of ice reduces with increasing pressure,
hence the waiting, the dissipation, and the dread,

the white hair of the waters combed, combined
with warm which vibrates longer than the cold.

 

Density Anomalies

At extremely low temperatures the density of ice
increases with heat up to seventy degrees Kelvin

but water shrinks as it melts and pressure reduces the
melting point, o ice o clarity; now

Ignis gnosis, to ignore is to ignite; the face centered cubic
engaged ignores crystalline structures

altering altering altering The walls are strong
and I am weak (John Berryman) the melting point

of water is over one hundred degrees higher
than suggested by extrapolation of the melting points

of the other group six A hydrides … For water moves
and flows with so very small a moving power
because it is made of small rolling shapes (Lucretius)

 

Material Anomalies

Water shrinks on melting, as do all who cry
Mineral child, miner, minor, mine

the salt and a kind of melting of the eyes
a tear a tear a terror why name such waters

such times of evening, the light above
the darkness rising, the gray the blue the dreary:

a miller became poor then a Nixie appeared to him
and promised to make him wealthy if he promised

to give her what was being born in his house
at that moment a son a surprise promised alas

to this spirit of the water this fair fiend of water
D2O and T2O differ significantly from H2O

deuterium tritium hydrogen two three one
the boy grown carelessly too close to the water

and the Nixie rose up and seized him and the story
lengthens there is a wife who saves him a flute

and a comb and a spinning wheel all in water all drowning
the flood the flood the flood the

Nixie tried to drown them but the wife
called the old woman who turned her into a toad

and him into a frog the flood separated them they
regained their human forms on land far
apart and forgetful

they became shepherds they met without knowing
each the other but he played a flute she remembered

playing a flute to rescue him so she wept
and they wept water with and various salts
besides lysozyme,

the antimicrobial properties of tears have been explained
by their high concentration of lactoferrin, betalysin, and

secretory immunoglobulin A “Nixie” ultimately
from the same Indo-European base as Sanskrit nij-,

Greek , Old Irish nigim (Irish nigh) , “to wash”

 

Thermodynamic Anomalies

the electron densities of the different isotopic forms
of liquid water have proved, so far, to be indistinguishable,

it is expected that the O-D bond length is shorter than that of O-H
due to its smaller asymmetric vibration and the smaller Bohr radius

of D relative to H. This gives rise to small differences in the size
and direction of the dipole moment between HDO and H₂O,

which further confuses any analysis of the structure of water
containing mixed hydrogen isotopes.

Water has higher specific heat capacity than ice or steam
Steam is invisible — it is not the fluffy stuff

it is the dangerous clarity coming out of the pipe,
the few inches of gas which then cools into droplets

He took me to his work inspecting the boilers
at the hospital, caves he guided me through he knew

water and knew the corrosives which hid in heat
and would eat metals back into the soil; Water

has an anomalously high heat and entropy
of vaporization and of sublimation.

 

Physical Anomalies

Water has oddly high viscosity yet unlike
the amber agony of honey engages light,
enthralling molecules colorless

paths into the ragged realms where
the rabbi and the rabbit flee the same flood

all flee the same flood; but no aquaeous solution
is ideal and as the temperature of water falls

viscosity increases and as density with pressure
increases, self-diffusion of water increases

and water can bounce because of its unusual
high surface tension, and bounce, bunsen,
is an old word water is a word

the Gibbs adsorption equation: a decreasing
surface tension corresponds to an enhanced ion

concentration at the interface contrary to expectations
based on Onsanger-Samaras theory …

the loneliness only grows deeper
the deeper the surface slides …

here and there a desert lies, and here
and there a survivor: (translated by Sylvia Beach:

I add one further word to you, a question rather. Does water flow in
your country too? (I do not remember whether you have told me so)
and it gives chills too, if it is the real thing. Henri Michaud)

What heat we feel we wear we weather
wilted selves learning to be
water and salt and little else, self.

 

Note: “Anomalies of Water” uses language from Martin Chaplin, (http://www.Isbu.ac.uk/water/anmlies.html).

Custody of the Eyes

Where they paint porch ceilings a shade
of blue you see on good days as if
through to sky two years after the storms
a land is streaked with blue, plastic under
which roof and rafter remain erased. Remains

my dream, by the sea, the slow warm sea
its own dream a geometry
all of an evening. Water.

There was a way there then to read which took
some small effort and cost an evening.
She would and he would. Then they together.
Such little things we were then, creatures
of the summer sea. Waking

But a puddle of water no more than one finger deep,
lying between the stones upon a paved street, offers a view
downwards under the earth to as great a reach as the open
heavens yawn on high, so that you seem to look down upon
the clouds and heaven, and you see manifest objects
miraculously buried beneath the earth.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura

•

We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,
Each seemed as ’twere a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay.

Shelley, “To Jane: The Recollection”

We love the light, or would, we wash ourselves
in it, it kills. The water is a form of light
heavy and within it the glitter
lingers dully but is there, is there
like earth itself waiting its turn.

Where there is no doubt there is no judgment
Wittgenstein, “On Certainty”

Looking down the boy did drown
his future in the gutter he crossed. He smiled.
Looking down he saw himself as in a pool
he leaped across, a wet inversion
and would have stopped mid leap to see
himself below look up his glance.
And then it was gone the face the moment
the boy looked back but missed the glitter
the moment passed. A fiftieth part of a second
is roughly a moment. Or less.

There is a way water can be thought to live,
to make just demands, to judge.
Fanciful water. Only surface, all the way
down. Watery in

that land the damage
remains and rounds its edges, soothes
the woundedness which is
one way. The other being
to look to see.

How it Feels, and Why

For There Was No Rain in Paradise
… Because of the Delicate Construction of the Spiritual Herbs and Flowers.
Christopher Smart

 

Visceral pain tends to be felt in the region of skin supplied by
the same nerves (as this relates to the embryological position
of the developing organ, the pain can be referred distantly-

She did cut less deep she did to herself sometimes
deeply. She a child who saw through, mirrored
clearly and cut deeply into her self, her proof. She did

e.g. heart pain to the shoulders, appendix pain to the navel,
and in men testicular pain to the upper abdomen). Localization
of pain on the skin is probably aided by touch information,
and perhaps even prior expectation.

I placed a hand in the fire to hold the molecules
which would speed past, into flesh, fly, the flaying
of my own skin a self, my proof. I have.

Pain can undergo a large degree of descending control.
The main source of inhibition of pain signals is the
periaqueductal grey matter (PAG) in the midbrain,
which projects both upwards and downwards, and releases
enkephalin and other endogenous opioids.

For the malignancy of fire is oweing to the Devil’s
hiding of light, till it became visible darkness.
Any, a pain-induced pity. Piety no pity.

She did cut less deep she did to herself sometimes
deeply. She was a child and saw through her mirror
clearly and cut deeply into her self, her proof. She did.

Pit or pith, or what is the word for that whiteness
beneath orange, beneath the peel? Albedo. A measure
of light, of the moon or any surface, such as her face

in the malignant mirror smiling miraculous, dear.
Back at her face Latin facies form, appearance, face.

The flowers would die of it, the rain harsh harshly falling
the storm the stirred air pressing. It stirs us.

A Theory of Narrative

The problem, according to Bh‡skara: of a flock of geese
ten times the square root of the flock departed for the M‡nasa Lake
at the approach of a cloud

sensory nerves enter the cord through the dorsal roots,
with cell bodies lying within the dorsal root ganglia.
There is one root for each vertebra, and the distribution
of each across the surface of the body is a dermatome

an eighth part went to a forest of St’halapadminis

these form bands down the body, with some distortion
across the limbs and the abdomen. Damage to a spinal nerve
causes loss of light touch sensation

three couples were engaged in sport on the water
which abounds in the delicate fibers of lotus

Tell, Dear, the number of the flock.

So if ten times the square root of the number,
plus an eighth of the number, plus six, is what we know
even if never has she known the delicious terror
of a cloud approaching M‡nasa Lake,
even if she has never known how to be half
of a couple sporting on the surface of water

she can know the square of twelve, a hundred
forty four geese and the sound they make makes
loud accounting. The cloud could bring rain
which frightens the delicate, is a danger and dark.

Fibers carrying pain terminate in Rexed laminae 1 and 2
(layers 2 and 3 are the substantia gelatinosa); proprioceptive and
touch fibers penetrate through all six layers, sending collaterals
to the deeper layers before ascending in the ipsilateral dorsal column.

 

Natural History of Flight

To Cher Ami the Croix de Guerre awarded for delivering twelve messages in wartime in spite of wounds. From late Latin pipio(n-,) young cheeping bird, imitative in origin, Pigeon appears twice in the King James translation. More properly Rock Dove, but Pigeon will do. A bird of the city has adopted us, and loves, in her way, us, as a kind of truth. Leviticus 12:6: she shall bring a lamb of the first year for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon, or a turtledove, for a sin offering.

…cortical processing seems to involve increasing sensitivity to particular types of stimuli, with increasingly large receptive fields. However, the nature of this processing may be oriented towards representations of objects as things that can be interacted with ….

Isaiah 7: 18 And it shall come to pass in that day,
[that] the lord shall hiss for the fly in the uttermost
part of the rivers of Egypt,
and for the bee in the land of Assyria …the only
appearance of bee in the Bible …

How much an area of skin is represented on the primary
sensory cortex changes depending on how much that area is used
for fine touch discrimination, and how dense the receptors are —
hence …the enlarged digit fields of Braille readers, and the decreasing field
when use of a finger is blocked experimentally

I wish to speak of the bees … honey-flies …

The fact that the hive contains so much that is wonderful
does not warrant our seeking to add to its wonders. Besides,
I myself have now for a long time ceased to look for anything
more beautiful in this world, or more interesting, than the
truth; or at least than the effort one is able to make toward
the truth. —Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee

Pain projection is less straightforward than touch or proprioception,
is less well understood. Perception of pain can be altered by many things.
For there was no rain in Paradise because of the delicate construction
of the spiritual herbs and flowers.

 

Note: The writings of Barry Mazur were crucial to this poem, especially Imagining Numbers, FSG, 2003.