Resilience
By Kimiko Hahn
A single drop of rain can weigh
fifty times as much as a mosquito and yet
the insect flies through a downpour without injury.
Rather than resist the impact, they
"go with the flow"—
like a boyfriend who trained in aikido—
and when there's a direct hit
the long wings and legs act "like a kite with a lengthy
tail"
so the insect can pull through the globule
before it splats on the ground. Moreover,
when such resilience is used as a model for robots
we learn: "If you make it very, very small,
you basically don't have to do anything else
to make it survive." A tough exoskeleton helps.
Also a happy-go-lucky heart even though
his mother was strangled when he was seven.
Kimiko Hahn, "Resilience" from Brain Fever. Copyright © 2014 by Kimiko Hahn. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc..
Source:
Brain Fever
(W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2014)
