Evolution

March 9, 2014

Evolution

I never want to stop

noticing the intricacies of life.

If I ever start to, I must tell myself

to bite into a grape, then look at its insides,

the tiny, complex striations, microscopic sections

of fruit, fractally structured; or I’ll go

outside and examine a bird’s feather or beak,

wonder how its body creates such different pieces,

some dense and hard, others fit for flight;

or I’ll go to the aquarium and try to count

how many scales a fish has, looking at how they attach

to its skin so cleanly and precisely, how each

muscular swimming creature has adapted

to just a slightly different environment,

together forming an entire, self-contained system;

or I’ll go to the zoo to watch the incredible,

unthinkable dexterity of the elephants’ trunks,

the giraffes’ tongues, the snow-leopards’ tails.

I look at a child’s hands.

I look at my own hands, notice

each of the bones and tendons,

fitting together so perfectly.

I notice the fine lines across the palm.

I stretch out my arm and marvel

at how far it reaches, and then

how far it has yet to go.

The Pig (Response Poem)

March 7, 2014

The Flea, by John Donne

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,   

How little that which thou deniest me is;   

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;   

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

    Yet this enjoys before it woo,

    And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

    And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.   

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;   

Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,   

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

    Though use make you apt to kill me,

    Let not to that, self-murder added be,

    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?   

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?   

Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou   

Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

    'Tis true; then learn how false fears be:

    Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,

    Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

The Pig

You mark this flea, and mark it well—

See the way our blood has made it swell.

And since its undeserved feast,

Look: it has turned into a selfish beast.

Drunken brute, it just wants more,

No longer blessed with what it had before.

    A joyous act this could be, true,

    If blood had love for blood, or I for you,

    But this, thank God, is more than we would do.

Just two things end when I kill this flea:

Its life, and (I hope) your hope in having me.

For of wedded pairs, we are the least,

Unless you've made this bloated bug a priest

Or judge of love, or of respect

(Abilities I doubt in this insect).

    Too fat to flee, the flea lies dead;

    If ever ordained, it surely would have said:

    Marriage lives not only in marriage bed.

Alive or dead, the flea means naught,

So in your piggish mind, this means I ought

To yield to you, but I want no part

Of the pleasures you commit to without heart.

Though hearts have blood within their walls,

'Tis hearts, not blood, to which love truly calls.

     The flea and you have no excuse;

     Thus say your wasted efforts to seduce:

     The opposite of love is merely use.

Sea otters

March 1, 2014

Sea otters

Sometimes at night I like to pretend

that you and I are sea otters.

We float on our backs

on the surface of bed sheets,

holding hands as we drift off to sleep

so the night-currents

don’t sweep us away.

There's something I need to tell you

March 1, 2014

There’s something I need to tell you

I want to tell you

about the caterpillar.

You know the beginning:

the creepy crawly caterpillar creature

inching on the ground, munching leaves, growing,

growing, shedding skin after skin, until

one day, she hooks herself to the soft underside

of a leaf, and peels off her final skin

to reveal the chrysalis hidden beneath.

You might think that metamorphosis

is like hibernation, that the caterpillar curls up

snug and asleep, and in her dreams

she sprouts one wing, and then another,

until she awakens and finds

her butterfly body

has simply bloomed.

But this isn’t so. Instead, I want to tell you how,

without hesitation, without doubt,

the chrysalized caterpillar dissolves herself,

bit by bit, all soft muscle, each tiny foot, breaking down

into a swirling white-yellow mess of cells,

and, somehow, these cells

reorganize themselves, restructure themselves

into something completely new, something

previously inconceivable, forming antenna after antenna,

wing after wing; each nerve and fiber,

each piece of the heart,

re-imagined;

rebuilt.

And the old crawling creature, whose body

has been transfigured—this being has not died!

No, miraculously,

this young winged thing remembers

the thousands of leaves she herself once traversed,

the broad blue sky she once longed for,

and everything she ever learned

in her caterpillar days.

All of this I need to tell you,

all of this you need to know, because

what I’m really trying to say is

for you,

my love turns butterfly.

Make a wish

March 1, 2014

Make a wish

The night is clear and the stars shine through

like diamond pinpricks. They are the same stars that you see.

The pale starlight reaching our eyes seems young and new,

but it is ancient, weary from travel through such infinite darkness.

Perhaps this star just gave its last breath, a small cry from the depths

of space, before shattering brilliantly. We will see its death, so many years later.

The stars are far apart,

and we are farther.

D.E.

February 28, 2014

D.E.

“...This research was carried out on D.E. who was born in 1954. In 1970 he was involved in a motor-scooter accident. A bilateral carotid angiogram...revealed almost total occlusion of the left internal carotid artery... His speech output consists primarily of 3-4 words arranged in simple syntactic structures... He is currently employed as a store keeper...”

His name might be David, or Donald,

or Daniel. He might have blond hair

or brown, blue eyes or green. He is currently

employed as a store keeper.

At sixteen I still held my first kiss as precious,

I daydreamed about what I might want to study in college,

and I began to learn how to put words together in just the right way

in an attempt to form something beautiful.

He speaks softly, maybe with a self-conscious smile.

He is currently employed as a store keeper.

Torches

February 28, 2014

Torches

Dusk settles onto the city

and the street juggler brings out his torches.

Clusters of people gather to watch

the fire spinning patterns in the air, and gasp

as the juggler with his quick grin almost almost

catches the wrong end.

The motions of juggling only take practice

and some muscle memory: the trick is not letting on

that the flames aren't actually hot enough

to hurt you.

Burning

February 27, 2014

Burning

Bonfire: primal scent of woodsmoke,

red beacon, warning sign, wild dare

to the prowling, predatory darkness.

And here, in our backyard,

safe as we are on the patch of land we claim,

even here, as the light flickers in your dark eyes,

you can still hear the old nightmares calling.

And the embers drift up to the firefly flames

of the ancient Andromeda stars.

Fall

February 27, 2014

Fall

We met in autumn,

when the leaves in their dying days

seemed more alive than ever before.

We leave in autumn. And yes, as autumn

leaves miss the ground they grew from,

I will miss you.

But not for long. No,

we will not have to miss each other

for long.

More

February 27, 2014

More

My first words were More, more.

Fitting, since for a child, nothing is ever, ever enough.

And now, in the days when life has become a fight

against the body, against the cold, against the thought

that nothing, nothing is enough,

as a new morning throbs again in the sky, I again

stare into the sun, wishing the colors were more, more.

More than chemical. More than this.

Sun shower

February 25, 2014

Sun shower

Walking with the dog down the canal path

through a light spring rain, not exactly minding

the wet, only smiling at how

I didn't think to bring a raincoat

as the ducks are quacking happily.