Richard Feynman's Woodpecker

Under a cloudy sky A hammering woodpecker Drilled and drummed On a tree branch With her chisel-like bill tip. Then a physicist stepped out Of his house into the haze Billowing over the street. He scratched his bald head And brooded and pondered Contemplated and thought Of the opaque secret of light. Well, he said, nowadays Of course we already know That light can be Both a particle and a wave, A stream of arcane photons Or a recondite river of rays: Electromagnetic radiation. But I still Do not understand it, He muttered, For this whole damned thing Remains elusive and mysterious. The problem is, he said, That while sound waves Propagate through the air And surface waves in lakes Or oceans travel in water, Light can traverse through Intergalactic nothing Moving in straight lines In the vacuum Of empty space Without a medium As electromagnetic waves. Now, how does this Silly light do it? How can it propagate Without a medium? And how does it know Which way is straight? And why is it a constant? He asked, and nothing Can travel faster Than the speed of light, That is to say almost 300,000 km per second. And he suddenly Remembered that once Richard Feynman said: Physicists do not Really understand physics, They just get used to it. And so the physicist just kept Wondering and scratching His bald head Under a cloudy sky. A dense gray mist Billowed then over the street And a hammering woodpecker Drilled and drummed On a tree branch With her chisel-like bill tip.