Thursday, May 23, 2013

a confluence of inspiration, history, and molecules

Carbon is the building block of life;

nitrogen -the spice for making enzymes, proteins-

is the majority of our atmosphere but it's locked


in the air 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 atmosphere

to make fertilizers and explosives.


He worked the process more,

developed poison gas for war.

His wife committed suicide


at a dinner party tribute to its

first successful use in the trenches 

and still he won the Nobel prize.


We too used the process to make

explosives, had so much left over

after the war that we made it into fertilizer,


grew a lot of corn and soybeans, dollars.

Built a world of oil and blood and fear,

desire, and television, and many babies.


And yet the moment when the sunset

sky goes orange and the wind becalms

and lovers’ kisses fill their souls,


time is poised forever, as it has always been

across it’s arrows, misunderstandings,

and constructions. Faith abides.


We live by those and all that flows from that...

God and molecules, knowledge 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 dance step,


a note sung high, a life, a perfect page

a smile spreading very very slowly, 

Do you hear the salt and see the honey?

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