Jack Scott writes

One Black Swan (pt 11)

I am burnt and stung
I’ve run out of experts with no further need to hide.
Is now the time to boldly, baldly show my hand
hoping for a better one dealt from another deck? 
This investigation is as layered as the cliffs themselves
with elemental forces repeatedly reshuffling decks
and dealing different hands unevenly around the table.
I doubt if my evidence would or could be heard,
even if they relaxed and listened
instead of being pricks around this odd balloon.
The limits they insist are in and of their minds,
set and settled on within their comfort zones,
subjective states.

Science has direction, traveled by a flow of increments
with occasionally a leap of something
with the size and strength of faith, of art.
What if we reversed the course first hypothesizing a conclusion,
then attempting to build a bridge between there and here,
as opposed to there from here?
What if they took on this problem and straightforwardly
set about to solve it without prejudice or bias?
Ah, they’ve got too much to lose,
too much erasure and retraction,
far too much repudiation;
this would shake the tree too much,
all its fruit would fall off. 

I’ve knocked on doors of Science and Religion . . .
Both are locked to me.
I can’t understand the one or believe the other. 
What access door is somewhere ajar for me to try to open,
offering an inkling, a hint of possibility? 
This is what I‘m left with, nowhere else to go, 
after consulting infant science suckling in its cradle.
Ironically, religion in its casket points a bony finger, 
toward its common origins with science in myth.
What should we call our myths?
What is their category?
Non-fiction, fiction or is there another genre
where Zeus and Shiva lived  . . . and live? 

Non-fiction and reality aren’t synonymous
or science would be stranded.
Fiction and non-fiction are also not the same, 
nor are they opposites, though they might be of equal size.
Their common aspiration with reality is to discover and reveal it.
They are two legs of a triangulation,
an imaginary device employed to find its other leg -  
something called the truth.
Truth might be something like a star
which can't be seen by staring at it with the naked eye;
you must look next to it to see it.
Within the realm of fiction without leaving fact behind
there are lenses of perception, facets of a diamond
that focus at the truth, adjusting toward being on it, 
zeroing in on this moving target that will not stay still.
When artists or scientists are asked
where their ideas come from 
most say from their imagination.
Where does imagination get them?

Fiction and non-fiction have been and can be
either, both or neither.
More like a relay than a competition. 
In one incarnation one will be the mother,
in the next - the child, without conflict or contradiction. 
If you get stuck, or lose your way in one, then try the other.
Sometimes fiction aka imagination lies within non-fiction.
Sometimes non-fiction just needs a boost from imagination
to help it over hurdles. 
Generally, the so-called factual tends
to slip and slide toward and into fiction. 
However, if truth is butterfly,
non-fiction is the pin that too often stills it.