Third Light

In Tel Aviv they set sunflower seedlings between two strong blue lamps, equal, facing each other, and off to one side a weaker one.

The strong ones answered each other the way two people talk over a table and settle nothing. The stems went to the side lamp.

No brain in them. Just cells around the outside of the stem, each taking its own reading, none of them told the total.

Twice the light is not twice the leaning. They knew that. What they couldn't measure is how far off true a stem might lean. The model says a little. The stem won't keep still long enough to show.

I keep thinking of the lamp nobody would have chosen, how it wasn't brighter. It was only not cancelled.