Sipping Nectar by Douglas Reid Skinner

 

The first precision atomic clock 

was built in 1955

by Louis Essen and Jack Parry.

It was accurate measuring down

to a millionth of a billionth of a second

and worked by counting the number of times

an atom of caesium-133

flipped from one state to another.

Defined this way, a second is the time it takes

for nine thousand, one hundred and ninety-two million,

six hundred and thirty-one thousand,

seven hundred and seventy spin flips

to have happened in your atom,

which on any one day is much the same time

as an Amethyst Woodstar hummingbird

requires for the eighty wingbeats that keep

it hovering in place and sipping nectar

from a delicate floral trombone.

(From A Short Treatise on Mortality, uHlanga Press, 2022. £7.50, copies available from the author.

Contact: douglas.cranerivieras@me.com)