Entomology

Greek is scurrying across the blackboard.
Some is familiar; a colony of pis are devouring a function.
There's a theta nesting in a cosine and
a pair of deltas are mating in the corner.

There are new species, though, foreign and loathsome.
A large one stakes out his territory inside a differential
daring anyone to disturb it, lest it sting or bite.

One student raises her hand, pointing at the thing.
"What is that?"
The professor grins,
takes his chalk and begins to dissect.

"It's not so different" he says, pulling it apart. "We call it a Ate-a.
Look here; here's an operand you know connected to a planck's constant.
They're both just over frequency and the speed of light
The parts are the same, just put together in a new way."

We're not assured, but we write it down in our field guides.
Next to the rho and its cousin omicron,
the del, which mimics the delta in shape only,
the common psi which Schrödinger taught a trick that changed the world,
the xi, its spawn and how to avoid them.

It's funny; so many people assume we took physics because
we have some sort of profound wonder or respect for these bugs
Really, though,
it's just that satisfying squish you get when you crush them in your hands.