It’s such a mystery—an enigma, really.

But no, it’s not.  

Like so many things, it is and it isn’t.

It means everything and nothing.

Symbols on page but superstructure for all matter you can fathom,

a Rosetta Stone for decoding the universe.

Piece by piece, row by row, block by block.  

It all comes together

where it’s been all along—

life force and universal presence

just out of reach until now.

p-orbitals hiding in misguided triads,

noble gases unseen & unknown for so long.

It took so long, but we’re nowhere near done.  

Island of stability elusive even now,

feynmanium a symbolic signpost for 137 protons not fated to stay together.

At this size, the forces within the atom are enough to tear it apart from the inside.

What does the future hold?

But is it the atom or our model that needs changing?

Even so, our present is beautiful.

Thanks, Dmitri.

Solids to orbits to probability clouds,

phosphorus to ruthenium to flerovium.

You hear it now if you did not before.

Let the calm wash over you like a sea of O and H.

Let the ions dissociate,

the molecules be digested.

Let oxidation states rule,

let the valence electrons in clouds too small to fathom control your every movement.

But wait!  Why can it rule you if you can’t see it? Why? How?

Does it deal, like most of life, in morals or politics?

Or is it above that?  Or why would the rules change?

Too late; compounds react and dispersion forces have shifted.

Chaos in a table of order,

order in a table of chaos.

Thanks, Dmitri.

Here we are, and yet it’s still so transient.

118 squares and hundreds of years

thanks to one man for this format so dear.

Others tried and failed, tried and succeeded,

added, improved, expanded.

But he is the root of it all,

the first quarks & electrons in the yoctoseconds after the Big Bang.

He set the ball rolling if nothing else.

Thank you,

Dmitri