A Poem by Dominic Leonard

Marie Curie

One cannot play idly with vibrations,
what rock can do when you’re not looking;
rock in which there hums a kind of depth charge,
a radiant richness, the silence of heat.

How the life of a tree is measured by its art,
those concentric rings of patience, she fathomed
the deep of, and found the very heart of, substance.
A valuation of intensity.

That rock, too, has a future tense,
a state of ultimate capacity,
which holds by a kind of grace all
of nature’s courages. When decay gripped her,

the dim quarters of the heart were elected,
ammonite-like, inside her. And glowed.
Physicist: one who has known the holiness
of matter, the fidelity of marks.

Dominic Leonard is a poet from West Yorkshire. His writing has appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, the TLS, and elsewhere. In 2019 he received an Eric Gregory Award. He lives and teaches in London.