Highways and Byways: Night Climbing

By Maik Strosahl

Was trying to sleep through another “refer” night, pulling a temperature-controlled trailer across Missouri. I set up Netflix to play old Star Trek: Next Gen episodes to nod off, but I am still awake and contemplating a Dyson Sphere.
    Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) was a theoretical and mathematical physicist. At four, he is said to have been obsessed with calculating how many atoms there were in the sun. He took pride in going against conventional wisdom and felt that it was better for a prophet to be wrong than to be vague about his ideas. Today, his name is borne by several concepts, including the aforementioned Sphere, which is a theoretical way an advanced space-faring civilization could harness their nearest star for almost unlimited energy by enclosing it with an artificial structure. It was also a great way for the second Star Trek series to bring back James Doohan in his signature role.
    While looking up Dyson, I saw that he was also associated with the University of Cambridge tradition of Night Climbing, where students would scale the sides of buildings to wander the rooftops of the campus and city.
    So, here’s to the recently deceased contrarian and to a good night’s sleep now that my mind is no longer walking the rooftops.

Night Climbing

For Freeman Dyson

The bricks
were just numbers,
his steps counting
to the rooftops,
where he could
explore their form
under cover of dark,
mathematic heavens,
theorems of the chapel
and a god earthbound.

How many atoms
burn our days in perpetuity,
arching the blinding path
we follow?
And then the universe,
counting down to the darkness
of a heat death?

Tonight,
there is no climate crisis.
Tonight,
there is no counting these stars,
calculating the end,
the beginning,
the very shape of numbers
upon the shingles of Cambridge,
losing track
of the moon in decent,
mankind in decline—
a subversive
forever chipping at consensus,
the very cobblestone he runs
to disappear into morning.

Copyright © 2021 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.