Science And The Apple

By Ashwath Ramesh

The sun shone sullen on his head,

As he picked his way with legs of lead,

Through the snow, shining white,

With late winter’s lazing light…

Thin and sallow, with a shock of hair;

To his cape black, a contrasting fair;

He trudged along, eyes downcast,

Hunched and tired and not very fast…

N’ then he found a great green tree,

Away from its fellows, somewhat free,

A place to sit, rest and repose…

But then he looked up, n’ rubbed his nose…

His stomach started to squeak,

Eyes turned wistful and bleak…

For there he saw, red, round and juicy,

Apples, that made his lips go oozy…

Oh! How he yearned for one to fall…

He was a hungry man after all!

He’d walked up and marched down,

N’ toiled his mind till it went brown!

Bingo! A juicy one obliged his call,

And bounced on his head, wig and all…

He caught it up, and fell to it,

So elated he could barely sit!

But never forget the bounce, soft as it was,

Nor the tiny bruise it did cause…

For they set his big brain in motion,

Ere the fruit vanished in his ocean!

Then came the queries, by and by…

How, what, when, where and why!

“Why did the fruit stay not?”

“Why had it the ground sought?”

So did he and his neurons fight,

On a query that’d make his might;

Thus did his mind prove its creed,

As the Law of Gravity it decreed…

“Every body encounters a force,

By another, with weight as source…

It rises with rise in masses,

And distance squared it surpasses…”

And so then did master men ogle,

And till today, do students struggle,

With the effects of what he said,

Years since he’s proven quite dead…

The greatest mind under the sun,

The man Sir Isaac Newton!

By Ashwath Ramesh