Atom Dreams

A poem about EVERYTHING

An octopus dreaming
Changing into colors he's never seen before
Unknowingly recreates a Van Gogh painting
That was destroyed by fire, and never recovered,
With no copies ever made. 

A chameleon under surgical anaesthesia 
Sliced open to treat an infection
Created a living mirror of the room around it
Which most certainly proved a challenge
To the surgeon who was now operating 
On his own face.

A caterpillar mush in a chrysalis
Dreams he's a man at a study desk
Who has had far too much to drink
And can no longer understand the Zhuang Zhou
Book that he was reading 

A gluon mesh holding together two quarks 
In a hydrogen atom, inside a child's balloon
--That has had perfect attendance for 14 billion years--
Dreams that he's a particle of sand 
On a beach in Fiji.