Seven Minutes: Day 5
& a poem
I learned today that the hoarfrost covering the grounded alder branch in this video is created by what is termed “deposition” — when water vapor turns directly to a solid without first becoming liquid. This is in contrast to “sublimation” where a solid turns directly into a gas.
This made me wonder what it means for us to embody a mostly liquid form living on a mostly liquid planet, while sublimation and deposition occurs all around us, has done so before we arrived, and will continue to when we are gone.
On the Nature of Sublimation
To leap from the dark, from the ribboning galactic pulse, and land in feathered strands across a leaf-drenched floor, skipping the liquid body's limits altogether, to refine what the mind has burned for worse and for wear, to find us, born not as accidents but artifacts of the sublime in time reversing back from bone to vapor from Why? to when... in that last breath becoming stars again. 01.22.2026
Thank you for reading.
{| AC
Angela, your poem is truly astonishing. Thank you for sharing it with us.
And happy birthday!!!
Wow!
First -- the video. I watched it on my laptop, zooming in to get a really good look at the frost. the details fascinated me so much I had to watch it again, and then again. I felt like I was in a favorite science class. Thank you for that!
Second-- the poem. I find it hard to believe you wrote and posted this on the same day. Please tell me this is revision #28! It is so good. The diction and imagery simultaneously delight and inform. I mean... these lines!:
"to find us,
born
not as accidents
but artifacts
of the sublime"
💛
The turn is smooth as an icy surface and the last two stanzas speak to one of life's critical questions.
Stellar work.