The Oscillator

It’s all analogue at bottom,
Binary digits included—

Discrete combinatorial
Systems are not approximate

To analogous waves—they are
More analogous waves at heart,

Which allows approximation
To emerge from discrete systems.

Yin is an analogy. Yang
Is, too. So are one and zero,

Yes and no, and all the base-paired
Deoxyribonucleics.

This is hard to grasp, as it seems
Like foolishness or paradox.

How can nothing have amplitude?
How can one unit be a wave?

We’re telling you, discrete ourselves,
These words invading your neurons,

Discreetly as we can, waving
And winking—each wink is a wave,

And the fixed points at the apex
Of each pendulum, whether arcs

Are spiky or shallow, are not
Actually fixed. There’s no still point

To the turning world. It’s kinky,
How tightly the turns can be curled—

You can count on them like the spheres
Of an abacus, the planets

And moons in their orbits, the seeds
Of thought in the lines of a poem,

But there’s always a little twist,
Little wiggle in your nothing,

Your zero never truly none,
Your one never solidly whole,

And in that wiggle squirms the world,
Our wholly analogous world.