A one-time philatelist I’d kept the glass,
never one to allow anything which brought
the minute into view to pass.
Enthusiastic and in my prime,
I’d magnify the tiniest mass
ten, a hundred, a thousand times.
Huge were the rings of wood, the whirl
of fingertips, the amoeba’s mime.
Still, the lure of something minuscule.
When the glass failed, my will
persisted towards the molecule,
the atom magnified to fill
a cathedral, angels singing around
electrons, protons, the invisible
neutrinos. Even still, these sounds:
a candle sputtering in the gloom,
a fly declining solid ground,
you chuckling in the living room.