This poem covers much the same ground as ‘The Bypass’ (#685). I’ve always enjoyed treating metaphysical things as if they were physical objects and words as containers is one I come back to in ‘Messages’ (#741) and probably others. And I definitely mention it in The More Things Change: “[W]e imbue things with meanings; we fill them up and keep our fingers crossed they don’t leak.”

 

The law I’m referring to in this poem is the law of conservation of energy which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it transforms from one form to another. Love is not sentiment or emotion, it is a force. So say some—just type “love is a force” into Google. If it is a force then it ought to obey certain metaphysical rules. A force is a push or pull upon an object resulting from the object's interaction with another object. Whenever there is an interaction between two objects, there is a force upon each of the objects. If that is true of physical objects what about metaphysical ones?

 

When B. and I were in close proximity to each other something… magical happened. Physicists don’t have much time for magic but what about metaphysicists? Energy that’s 'wasted', like the heat energy from an electric lamp, doesn’t simply disappear. Instead, it’s transferred into the surroundings and spreads out so much that it becomes very difficult to do anything useful with it. Devices can be set up to try to minimise the waste and that’s really what this poem is, a filter that managed to capture a trace of something now lost.