Peter Rabbit, Stand-In
Observation plus Imagination

A small dark-haired woman 
often took her sketch pad into the garden,
on walks into the nearby wood.
There, while penciling elegant
mushrooms, flowers, grasses
and the occasional bunny,
she noticed 
how mushrooms grew
how bunnies acted.
Her own pet bunnies
were much like the wild ones, 
loving to nibble grasses and flowers.
Mushrooms were things apart,
colors, shapes, which fascinated her.
A diligent student,
she read all she could 
science, fable, art.
She chronicled her observations
on mushrooms developed 
a theory on how they multiply.
Her scientist Uncle read her paper
on mushroom growth
and presented her discoveries
at a Kew Gardens meetings 
where Beatrix herself 
had been forbidden to attend.
They rejected her theories
without much thought.
Royal Society and Linnaeus Society,
denied her membership
in spite of her increasing 
acumen in science.
Continuing with her art
though not neglecting science,
she created energetic,
enterprising, rascally
young Peter Rabbit
who turned Mr. MacGregor’s
carefully laid garden, and 
Peter’s family’s expectations,
upside down.

I often think Peter Rabbit
was the author’s secret alter ego,
her stand-in so to speak,
defying the old guard who could
not understand how a female
--talented artist, nature observer,
scientifically trained mind—
could use imagination to
bridge the gap 
between present knowledge
and new discoveries.

Peter Rabbit and Beatrix--indeed!

My note on  Beatrix, I came to love her and to knowledge of her scientific discoveries after taking an art class at London’s National Gallery: Beatrix Potter loved her garden and her animals. Like other girls of her generation, she expressed that love in caring for them and by drawing them. As her pet bunnies hopped around the garden , Beatrix became fascinated with mushrooms. As she grew into a young lady, studied science she recognized that her observations and their theories did not align. She authored a paper on mushroom reproduction and her uncle presented it for her since women were not allowed to present scientific papers at that time. Her theories were disregarded (though later proven). Years later she began to draw her rabbits, Peter famously misbehaving in Mr. Mac Gregor’s Garden. I see her as that naughty bunny, poking fun at the established scientific voices, and all who diminished her efforts as “only for children” or “only the thoughts of a woman.” Her art, apart from the bunnies, especially her drawings of mushrooms  became recognized as scientific illustration of the first degree. As she grew older and more famous, her theories became respectable. Art fed her science, science fed her art. Just as Peter often managed to outsmart the stodgy farmer, Beatrix Potter is the one remembered today for her art and for the scientific discoveries her careful observations and artistry offered to the world.

Without Music, Nothing from Einstein
Art empowers imagination

(after Information on Einstein gathered from "Einstein’s Evolving Universe: Beyond the Big Bang" in National Geographic magazine.)

“Music helps him when he is thinking about his theories,” Elsa, Einstein’s second wife told researchers in 1919. “He goes to his study, comes back, strikes a few chords on the piano, jots something down, returns to his study.” 

Music was his muse.
I wonder which of the melodies 
Spurred him to his theory

Big bang 
was not conceived with a drum.
It’s an idea developed
on a bowstring’s strum.

Music allowed Einstein
to leap above what he could see
into worlds unknown.
Without music 
there would be no E equals MC squared.

“Life without playing music is inconceivable for me,” he (Einstein) declared. “I live my daydreams in music. …I get most joy in life out of music.”

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales featuring food, family, and strong women. Her essays, poems, and fiction are in or soon will be appearing in Ekphrastic Review, Pinesong, Brass Bell, Verse Visual, anti-heroin chic, Gargoyle, Silver Birch, Ovunquesiamo, Verse Virtual, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Yellow Mama, and others. She’s a 2022 Pushcart nominee, received Best of Micro Fiction, 2021 (Haunted Waters), nominee for Best of the Net, 2023 and was a 2022 runner up in Frost Foundation Poetry Competition. Her first chapbook is Languid Lusciousness with Lemon (2017 from Finishing Line Press.) Her second chapbook, Feathers on Stone, is coming in late 2022 from Main Street Rag.