Time and Space - April 20 2026

 

Time and Space

April 20 2026

You'd think only physicists

could play ball.

Could manage the complexity 

of mass, gravity, trajectory,

account for resistance and wind

to hit a moving target

without breaking stride.

You’d think just getting it from second to first

would take a graduate degree

and several tries.

But we don’t give throwing a thought. 

The eye needs no intervention,

the arm can be safely left

to muscle memory.

Even kids do it;

self-taught

before they’ve even heard of Newton’s laws.

Yet I never tossed a ball with my dad.

Was it because he saw badly?

Because in those thick owlish glasses

he might lose it in the sun?

Or because he was a serious man

who couldn’t be bothered with child’s play?

And anyway, he worked late

and came home exhausted most days.

While I was good at arithmetic

but perhaps too self-conscious

about being awkward at sports.

So it takes more to throwing a ball

than calibrating force, angle, release point.

I wonder if Einstein ever played catch,

at least as a child

in his Munich backyard.

Maybe not;

after all, I’m told he wasn’t good at math,

and who knows about Hermann

his proper German dad.

But at least he understood 

that time goes in one direction

and there’s no going back.

That trains pass in the night,

and just how fast

the space between them grows.

Please don’t take this as strictly autobiographical. My father and I weren’t alienated, antagonistic, or distant. Just not particularly close. He was a typical 50s dad: the breadwinner, who left the home-front to his wife; the symbol of ultimate authority (“wait till your father gets home!”j; and more interested in his own circle of friends than being a good buddy to his kids. Dads back then weren’t trying to be buddies, weren’t seeking the approval of their children. Looking back, I might wish he’d had a more engaged and fun-loving father. But he was a man of his time.

I recall the strong impression a particular science fiction story made on me as a kid. Some kind of Tom Swift character was raised in space (on the airless moon?) and when he came to Earth was amazed — considering the complexity of the variables — that people here could so effortlessly and accurately toss a ball. In air and wind, no less! Reading this was one of those singular things that make you suddenly realize there are realities that exist outside your familiar box of assumptions: the hidden dimensions; the different perspectives; the taken for granted that shouldn’t be. Even the limits of consciousness:  all the work one’s brain does below the level of awareness; the mysteries of one’s own mind. Almost every time I watch baseball I think back to this. And since I watch a lot of baseball, it seemed it might make a good start to a poem.

Here’s something I took for granted, but apparently had fallen to a common myth. (I checked only after writing the poem. But left the error in anyway, claiming the get-out-of-jail-free-card of poetic licence!)

From my Perplexity app:

“The idea that Einstein failed math is a persistent myth—he actually excelled early on, mastering algebra, geometry, and calculus by age 12-15, far ahead of peers.Einstein earned top marks (1s and 2s, where 1 is best) in math at Luitpold Gymnasium and Zurich Polytechnic. He received his teaching diploma in 1900 and PhD in 1905, though he skipped classes to self-study advanced topics.

One other thing he was good at was visualizing. It was by imagining  passing trains that he came up with the concept of the relativity of time and space. I mention this to give some context to the final stanza.

Herman Einstein (born 1846)

Here’s a dad who not only doesn’t look very fun-loving, but also very ill-suited to any athletic endeavour! A very Victorian gentleman indeed.