Home That Crouching Spirit A Lack of Gravity (The Cow Jumped Over the Moon)

A Lack of Gravity (The Cow Jumped Over the Moon)

The dish ran away with the spoon;
Was this a match? A marriage of equals?
When cups of equal standing ring in tune,
Harmonics are the guarantors of sequels;
But those two disks, though equally of wood,
Had both such shallow bowls, un-serious, un-solemn —
They didn’t have one radius in common —
Such weak attraction’s hardly understood.

From the traditional nursery rhyme:

Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

“A Lack of Gravity” – The title is a play on the meanings of “gravity”:
 1) seriousness; and 2) the force of attraction toward the center of the planet Earth.