Dipoles

Hi - This poem is a chemistry one that will form part of a new collection that I'm working on..

Dipoles

Linus Pauling was a savvy fellow.

His scale did not slide. It passed scrutiny.

His mind centred on charge separation.

Bond energies were his serum and score.

They were underpins, supporting concrete

The hard science of electrons and their moves.

Their level of attraction to atoms.

Pauling gave us dipole moments - moments

to think……….to perceive all chemical bonds.

Polar bonds, like true North and the Deep South.

Polar ketone groups; positive carbon,

negative oxygen on horizons

of charge. Bleached by sheer, organic distance.

So, when we think of nucleophilic

attack at a positive carbon, we

are standing on a crag of metaphor.

The teasing threshold comes as the flatness

springs into 3D: the tetrahedron.

The intermediate that collapses.