I like these little punks,
Which, physicists explain, “did not behave
As predicted.” Though the science is beyond me,
The feeling’s not: who wants to be
Foreseen, foretold, made powerless
By being pigeonholed?
Muons are most likely
Eights on the Enneagram: The Challengers.
They’d have to be: they’re also known as “fat
Electrons,” and the lab room skinny
Is when the eggheads found them, one
Declared, “Who ordered that?”
It comes as no surprise
They’ve also been described as “sensitive
To something that is not in our best theory”—
Such sensitivity belongs
To both those particles and people
That keep long lists of wrongs,
And wronged they are since muons
Decay into electrons and neutrinos
In microseconds. Who would not be pissed
To flicker in and flicker out
So quickly they can barely be
Considered to exist?
A classic Eight, I side
With them, the subatomic underdogs—
Stout, misbehaved—with unacknowledged powers
We’ve just begun to understand
Might undermine the undisputed
World we thought was ours.