carbon is the building block of life
nitrogen -the spice for making enzymes, proteins,
is the majority of our atmosphere and it's locked.
and only freed by lightning strikes
or bacteria on the roots of certain plants
that have the trick of freeing it
until a chemist found a way
to pry it from the air
make fertilizers and explosives.
he worked the process more
-developed poison gas for war
then his wife committed suicide
at a dinner party tribute to its
first successful use in the trenches
and still he got the nobel prize.
and we........used the process
made explosives, had too much left over
after WW II so we made it into fertilizer
grew a lot of corn and soybeans, dollars.
made a world out of oil and blood and fear,
desire and television, and many babies.
and yet the moment when the sky
goes orange and the wind dies
and a lover's kiss levels all,
it's poised forever, as it has always been
across arrows, misunderstandings and constructions,
technicalities and sense...... of course, of course
we live by those and all that flows from them
-molecules and god and history
salt and honey, words and yearning flesh,
songs. the movement of a finger
or an eyebrow. a thought that gets away
or finds it's way into a step.
a note sung high, a life, a page,
a smile that spreads slowly,
ever so. ever so.
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