All of humanity’s difficulties stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
—Blaise Pascal, Pensées (first published in 1670)
Let me learn this quiet art
of being still in a room alone.
There is so much I cannot do
to help the world,
but this—
let me learn to metabolize
silence as the alga in lichen
metabolizes light. Let me learn
to root and grow
in the sparest of places
as the fungus of lichen attaches
to the barest of rocks.
Let me learn to let the vastly different
kingdoms of myself serve each other
instead of warring,
the way alga and fungus
live together in lichen,
a symbiosis so stable we see
the two as one. This is how
I come to believe it is possible.
I have been sitting with lichen.
The quietest of sermons.
I cannot stop listening.
Posts Tagged ‘biology’
On Peace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, lichen, peace, silence, solitude, symbiosis on March 28, 2025| 5 Comments »
Subtraction
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, biology, leaves, photosynthesis, trees on October 15, 2024| 7 Comments »
For months now, the days darken.
This signals the trees to stop making chlorophyll,
and, in its absence, other pigments in the leaves
can be seen. Yellow flavonols. Orange carotenoids.
Red anthocyanins. They adorn each tree
with such radiance, such honest treasure—
a beauty that was always there
concealed beneath the green.
Touch me, I want to say to the darkness.
or perhaps more truly, I say to the self,
be touched, be touched as if you are a tree.
Let what you know of yourself break down.
What hidden gold might be revealed then?
What amber? What astonishing vermillion?
Nocturnal Hyperhidrosis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, body, menopause, praise, sweat on September 24, 2024| 15 Comments »
I do not love it, the way I fall asleep cold
only to wake in a flush of heat.
Do not love the soaking, the drenching
the damp, then the clammy.
Not once in those small dark hours
have I thought to praise the eccrine glands,
the aprocine glands that secrete the sweat,
so much sweat, the sweat that makes me
shove down the covers and seek
a dry towel to lie on. The cool
night air never quite cool enough.
I don’t love it, the way the warmth
steals me from dreams and returns me
to the demands of body, a body
that’s changing, that’s aging,
a body with an exquisitely sensitive
hypothalamus that worries my body’s too warm.
How quick I am to complain instead of praise.
How hard to remember in these hot and sodden
hours that I admire the wisdom of the body.
Let me now remember I’m a being made of water,
a pond of a woman returning herself to the air.
I am at the mercy of evaporation.
How natural it is, though I do not love it,
this teacher in what comes next.
This is how I practice how
to disappear.
A Closer Look
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, curiosity, daughter, father, lake, science on June 18, 2024| 6 Comments »
I recall how dad gave me glass vials
and encouraged me to go to the lake, take samples,
then bring them back to the house
where he’d taught me to use a glass dropper
to put a small bead between slide and slip,
then focus the microscope
to spy on all the life pulsing there—
thin oblong shapes and zooming dots,
spinning green circles and segmented strands—
it was like eavesdropping on adult conversation,
like being given the key to enter life itself,
and I, an eager traveler into invisible realms,
spent hours staring into that intricate world.
Memory is, sometimes, a chance to meet
a drop of the past, then wonder about the world
beyond what we first see. I thought this
was a memory about lake water, glass slides,
a microscope. I look closer. I see trust.
Pulsing love. A father teaching curiosity.
Apulosis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, grief, miracle, scar, skin, wound on January 8, 2022| 4 Comments »
They’re almost invisible now,
these scars on my hands—
cuts from cat claws
and thorn bushes,
barbed wire fences.
I have long since forgotten
their stories.
It’s what the body does—
forms new fibers
to mend damage.
But what of when
the wound has touched
every part of the body,
every part of the heart,
every part of story
of who you are?
How long will
there be healing
before there’s a scar?
Will it be raised?
Or sunken? Or flat?
I run a fingertip
along the thin pale lines
on the back of my right hand.
These scars, I see
are repairs made by time
and biology.
But some scars,
I believe,
are beyond the body.
Some scars
can only be knit
by miracle.
Beyond Basic Biology
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, hormones, junior high, teenager on March 1, 2021| 4 Comments »
Now I love biology—the how of
life, the what of cell, the physiology of why—
but I was so bored in ninth-grade biology class
when Mr. Williams stood at the front of the room
with his rumpled hair and brown corduroy blazer,
chalk dust on his fingers, chalk dust in his drone,
chalk dust chafing on my teenage thoughts.
I wanted to know about boys. And kissing them.
I wanted to know what it would feel like
if that blonde across the room cornered me
against the wall with the anatomy posters
then let his fingers experiment
across my bare skin. But I was bored
by Mr. Williams’ boring biology, bored
by his black-and-white boring film strips,
bored by the clock that slowed on the wall.
Bored in that windowless room that smelled
of his coffee and formaldehyde.
Sometimes I’d write notes to friends.
I’m so bored, I’d write. As if boredom
were news worthy of sharing. As if biology
weren’t everything.
I would love to go back to that girl
in that junior high room fidgeting
in her metal chair at the shiny black lab table.
Even then, her own biology was riotous,
her estrogen surging, her pituitary gland raging,
her body and mind controlled by forces of nature
she couldn’t begin to understand.
I wouldn’t tell her to pay attention
to Mr. Williams, no, but to be more curious
about her own feral hows and whats and whys—
the miracle of her own biology
untethering everything she thought
she knew about who she was
and her place in the biome,
all that dark curly hair springing up
in surprising places, her blood pitching
with a wild and red pulsing
that years later is still her best teacher.
And Thank You for Soapy Water
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aphids, biology, garden, gratitude, poem, poetry on August 18, 2019| 12 Comments »
Aphids are born pregnant.
I don’t want to believe it,
but it makes sense, considering
what’s happening in my kale.
And Google confirms it.
They are born pregnant.
And their embryos are also
pregnant. Three generations
of garden cripplers in each tiny
soft-bodied bug.
No matter how much I hate
and curse them, I have to admire
such insistence, such dedication
to survival.
It is like gratitude,
I think. Sometimes, it seems
as if there’s not much to be grateful for,
but if I can think of one blessing,
then often, buried in its belly
is another blessing,
and that gives birth to another.
Soon there’s a teeming colony
of gratitudes. And although
the news might try to squish them
or wash them away,
they persist.
Yes, all those tiny feasting gratitudes,
how easily they find a way
to thrive. How impressive
their tenacity, their drive.
And Yet It Is Always Itself
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, body, love, new beginning, newness, parenting, poem, poetry, stomach on August 13, 2019| 2 Comments »
The stomach replaces its lining
every four days. Every four days.
Because it’s so highly corrosive,
every four days it remakes itself
and becomes completely new.
Love, this is what I want to do.
Because sometimes we are acid.
Because sometimes we are cruel.
I want to start over every four days.
Every four days, let us be new.
Curiosity Like a Baby’s Skeleton
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, curiosity, human, poem, poetry on August 12, 2019| 2 Comments »
We start with more.
But then, as we age,
there’s a lessening.
Where there once
were 300 bones,
there are now 206.
Where there once was cartilage,
now it’s fused and stiff.
What used to be flexible,
now refuses to be rebirthed.
What once allowed for rapid growth
now considers itself mature.
And how do we get it back,
that willingness to grow?
And how do we unstiffen?
And how do we unknow?
Seventh Grade Biology: A Confession
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, consequences, junior high, poem, poetry, self reproach on October 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »
It was my biology teacher who taught me
to let things go. It was true, I didn’t like him,
no one did. And that is why, when he left
his coffee cup on our table and we
were dissecting rabbits, Kathy looked
at me with a small pink part
in her hands, then eyed his cup.
My face lit up with the wickedness
of it, but I mouthed to her, No,
then watched as she dropped
the bit in. It didn’t float. There
are moments of our lives
we will forever revisit and wish
we had been more brave—
but I was scared to betray my friend,
scared to make waves. As it is,
we waited for him to pick up the cup,
and when he did, tried not to stare
as we wondered when he would
take a sip. Five minutes before
the bell rang, we rebagged
our strange accomplice and wiped
the table clean, then left the room
not seeing what happened next.
What happened next. I thought all night
about the effects of formaldehyde.
I thought he might die. I thought
of how I could have taken his cup
from his desk and quietly poured it out.
I thought of the twist in his heart
when he found bit at the bottom.
But the next day in biology, there
he was, corduroy coat and big brown glasses,
his awkward smile, his coffee cup.
He didn’t mention the crime.
I could barely look up. I had never felt
so small. And if he knew, he never said.
Sometimes the worst punishments
involve lack of consequence,
leaving us to live with our offenses.
And though I don’t recall his name,
I do recall his grace. I swore never again
to keep silent for such a prank.
I’d like to think that if we met, I’d tell him
about that day. And how sorry I am
I didn’t speak up. And how much I admired
the way he let it go. Could I? To this day,
what I remember most, the horror
blossoming in my stomach
the color of rabbit flesh. And
when I dared to look at him, his smile.