ALICIA SOMETIMES

Higgs Field

Why we don’t disappear into the noiseless frailty of blackness. How

subatomic particles navigate this field in distinct ways. Energy pervading.

Top quarks with more mass than the electron. As if electrons slide slick—

marbles on marble, glassy rolls smoothing through brisk expanses

of space. The top quark, a pinball, trundling along thick pastures. Varying

resistance. Photons, neutrinos, seamless gliding in the breadth of the

known-universe unable to stop or mingle, impervious to its surrounds.

Fundamental particles attain mass—consequential interactions—ongoing

discussions in magnitude. Excitations creating the Higgs boson, a

kindling of impression lasting the dash of 1.56×10−22 seconds. How

bosons huddle around mass. What we find in the decay. How we

observe only after. This scalar quantum field of transformation essential.

How we hold together. How we might understand gravity. Why we can

witness sinuous stars palpitating on a winter’s night waiting for shifting

clouds to move on. Why we embrace as we look up, breathless

at the barred, brushless smears of Andromeda and wait just a little

longer to go home.

Alicia Sometimes is an Australian poet and broadcaster. She has performed her spoken word and poetry at many venues, festivals and events around the world. Her poems have been published in Best Australian Science Writing, Best Australian Poems and many more. She is director/co-writer of the art/science planetarium shows, Elemental and Particle/Wave. Alicia’s TedxUQ talk in 2019 was about combining art with science. In 2021 she completed the Boyd Garret residency for the City of Melbourne and a Virtual Writer in Residency for Manchester City of Literature and Manchester Literature Festival. In 2023 she has received ANAT’s Synapse Artist Residency and has co-created an art installation for Science Gallery Melbourne’s exhibition, Dark Matters.