The Creation of a Container

Exciton poetics binds us
At our core, a small negative

Particle orbiting a large
Hole. Tied to each other, we dance

In a wave of relatedness
Across a crystalline lattice.

Not an actual atom stirs,
And yet we perform our ghost dance,

A heartbeat around its meaning,
Glued to that positive absence.

You take a world, such as our world,
A compound of names and nothing,

And you make designer matter
Out of all the gaps that mean things,

Polaritons of description,
Condensed phononic prosodies.

You don’t need accelerators,
Vast underground rings built by teams

Who deploy cooperation
And pent energy to smash things.

You can do this at a table,
Alone with your small devices.

The tricky part comes when you’re done
And you have to extract yourself

From us without us collapsing,
Dense, intact holes, no container.