Seeing Depth with X-rays

Posted bymarialbergPosted inA to Z Challenge 2025, Depth, NaPoWriMo 2025, poetryTags:, , , , , , ,

It’s our last few days of NaPoWriMo (National /Global Poetry Writing Month) and the A-Z Challenge. I hope you’re enjoying the A to Z of Depth.

from Wikipedia

During this month’s exploration of depth, we’ve talked about many ways to look inside ourselves like: Abstract and Concrete thinking, Depth Data, Depth Psychology, Depth of Knowledge, and Mindfulness. X-rays are how we can physically see inside ourselves, inside our bodies.

X-rays are electromagnetic radiation outside the visible range with wavelengths between gamma rays and ultraviolet rays. X-rays have higher energy than visible light and can pass through most objects. Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays accidentally while exploring light phenomena produced by discharging electrical current through vacuum tubes in 1895.

For medical x-rays that take images inside our bodies, x-rays are generated by an x-ray machine, pass through the body, and pass through an x-ray detector on the other side. The image represents the shadows of the forms inside the body. The captured images that result are called radiographs.

Look at some of these strange things x-rays have revealed in human bodies:
X-Ray Oddities: the light bulb and the fir tree really creep me out.

Most of us don’t have an x-ray machine handy to check out our bodies, (and x-rays can also have harmful effects), but we can do our own body scan with a body scan meditation. I enjoyed John Kabat-Zinn’s body scan meditation in his Masterclass, so I found his body scan on Youtube to share with you.

Today’s Poem

Generational Celebration

When the cherry-plums burst into pink this spring, I thought they were early. Mom said they were late. Either way they lit up my windows with sugar-spun blush. Their quick burst of energetic joy short-lived like the jolt from Kool & the Gang’s Celebration at a reception. Everyone around the world, woo-hoo and then the song fades, and the petals fall as quickly as they arrive.

When I went out to look at the dark burgundy leaves of the now calm cherry-plums, birthing little balls of future fruit, it looked like the pink from past blossoms had dripped onto the rhodie below. Burgundy echoed in each flower’s heart, but the petals burst with springs blush again like a generational passing of pink.

delicate
final pink petals
in the grass


This poem was inspired by today’s prompts at NaPoWriMo and Writer’s Digest’s April Poem a Day (PAD) Challenge. And the Haibun Monday prompt from Frank Tassone at dVerse Poets Pub.

Thank you so much for coming by and reading my post. Any thoughts or questions about X-rays? Come back tomorrow for more depth exploration and poetry.

Published by marialberg

I am an artist—abstract photographer, fiction writer, and poet—who loves to learn. Experience Writing is where I share my adventures and experiments. Time is precious, and I appreciate that you spend some of your time here, reading and learning along with me. I set up a buy me a coffee account, https://buymeacoffee.com/mariabergw (please copy and paste in your browser) so you can buy me a beverage to support what I do here. It will help a lot.

24 thoughts on “Seeing Depth with X-rays”

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  3. So much to love about this piece…from the unique reference of the “Celebration” song to the contrasting pondering of life’s cycles you exquisitely describe in the second stanza. Beautifully done.

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  6. I love the description of the cherry-plums lighting up the windows ‘with sugar-spun blush’, Maria, I can relate to that, as well as their ‘quick burst of energetic joy’.  There’s a hint of sadness in the haiku.

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