chemistry class with mr. nunan

senior year in high school,
in an old residence
on the periphery of regent’s park
that had been converted into
the american school in london,
in an upstairs room
during chemistry class with mr. nunan,
i could often be found 
doing the crossword puzzle
or unscrambling the word jumble
in the international herald tribune,
a copy of which came to each of us
daily in homeroom.

i’m thinking now that,
although i passed chemistry
and graduated from high school
in good standing,
i may nonetheless 
have missed important lessons
in that class, lessons
that might have served me
later in my navigation of life
by offering up helpful clues 
to the puzzles
of broken bonds,
unanticipated reactivity, and confounding
attraction-to-repellency ratios; lessons
that might have provided strategies
for sorting into meaningful order
the jumble of elements 
inherent in interpersonal chemistry.

late bloomer though i may be,
now in my senior years
i have become 
a more curious and attentive student
in the laboratory of life, 
with lived experiments
refining the data,
fine-tuning my conclusions—

chemistry has its own laws,
its own small explosions
and cooperating covalences,
its suspensions,
its ongoing need 
to balance inequalities
and surrender to stoichiometry.

i offer apology to those 
whom i may have injured 
with clumsy handling
of my test tubes, beakers,
and bunsen burner.

—dotty seiter

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Notes about poem and art:
• I first learned about conceits—elaborate, intellectual metaphors that link two vastly different things—while taking an online course last June. Though I tried, both then and after I’d completed the course, I wasn’t able to generate a conceit. Now, a year later, I suddenly realize that in writing “chemistry class” I’ve written an extended conceit unintentionally! Hot damn!
• Small Explosions is a second mood-mini created while hanging out with my sisters in the sun overlooking Long Island Sound. With no intended subject in mind as I painted, I set out only to play with color and line while basking in sister conversation. Now, after the fact, I see ways that it feels connected to my poetic conceit!