Poems on Eternity, the Endless Universe, and Me

Watterson’s musings press the limits of expression. Planck’s ultimately small 10^-35 meters expands to the Sufi mystic’s Nothingness. Feelings expand from Issa’s compassion for the fleas on his deathbed to a glimpse of God’s anguish at [having to permit] the Holocaust, the price of Israel.

In one vignette, Watterson pictures the cosmos, endless universes, as dust particles at 30,000 feet disappear in the troposphere.

What is the effect? The effect, he says, is something like finding a long-lost reference. Or of having stumbled on the right person just now to tell about a rare instance of moral bravery in his youth.

The effect might be that just now innumerable originals of Beethoven are dipping their quills in ink and starting the seventh symphony. One need only imagine and listen.

John Watterson, as a research chemist in the U.S. Geological Survey 1966–1995, published many papers and edited various books on prospecting using the surface geochemical and biogeochemical signatures of subsurface mineral deposits.John’s research on the possible use of a common spore-forming soil bacterium in mineral exploration resulted in wide commercial and academic interest and in many invitations to speak. He calls it a fun career.In retirement, John has been active in a small-town writing group in western Colorado. His poems are of the widest scope, candid and evocative. They can invite the reader under a coverslip, into a gopher hole, or into the infinite region enclosing our universe.