Transitions
Could it be considered
A kind of death
This melting of ice
This shape in a mold
Quickened by heat
Into liquid escape
Subject to weight
The fast run downhill
The settle and seep
And inevitable peril
Of dying again
As vaporous mist
Moist, like a breath
And betrayed
By the coming cold
Nest complete, the blue jays spend hours on end in the wax myrtles. They defend their honeymoon suite with harsh calls and indignant attacks–innocent warblers fare no better than foraging crows. Rabbits aren’t allowed to graze in the yard, and the merest quiver of a squirrel whisker raises apocalyptic alarm.
Between these bouts of aggression, the lovers perch together and mumble softly to each other. They feed each other, public displays of “affection” that make me wonder about their behavioral chemistries. How does a body cope with such abrupt changes? They interrupt bonding with outbreaks of tumultuous fury, then switch back to bonding, over and over again in the course of a day. In the span of a minute, sometimes. The physiologic stress must be enormous, and yet it seems to work for them. How?
Amphibious
The embryo flexes
Twirling in its clotted pearl
Of egg, clouds of spawn
Spattered across the bog
The pollywog nursery lined
With moss and leaves
Mud and silt, secluded pools
For the immature throng
Of grazers, minnow sleek
In mottled skin with bristle
Gills neatly tucked away
The whole world is water
Mouths full and ears full
As bones push into buds
Sprouting these legs
In an awkward unbecoming
The road to exile, maturity
Is always a breaking
Of surface, an intersection
Of amnion, water, and air
No ribs, no muscles
For the breath, only gulp
And inefficient heart
Subject to chill, blood
Flecked and flickering
Supplemented by supple
Skin, a tenuous tension
Of absorption and loss
The sustained refrain, air
Vibrating in humid heat
All their hungry songs afloat
Thrilling through their empty throats
These photos were taken January 1, 2004 at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, which was hosting a traveling exhibit called “Frogs: A Chorus of Colors”.
Fiery breath roils through mantle bronchi
Flares forth from volcanic vents
Seamed between scales of shale
Into troposphere lungs, which are sky
Flora and fauna the intricate web
Of capillary
A delicate matrix, venule and arteriole
Mating to pass molecular necessities
From one organ to the next
From the dense liver that is land
The massive seven-lobed filter
Swollen with blood and bile
To the estuarine inlets of kidney
Loops of salt gradient and chemical pump
And pulsing tides, heartbeat wrung by the moon
To the alimentary marshes
Where everything rots and is passed
Down the vital chain, back into earth
Subducted deep underground
As one plate heaves its bulk atop another
In a colossal copulation that seeds nothing
But is felt by the unrenewable ones
The wingless ones who crave
Solace and brilliance and ecstasy
A brief moment in Gaia’s hungry mind
To glimpse her ancient memories
Before time passes down the vital chain
What am I
When I’m spinning?
A giddy earthen child
Hair and hands in orbit
All my brilliant paths described
By Riemann’s rumpled planes
When dizzy, I collapse in grass
Yearn toward the evening moon
Enchanted by its gibbous rise
Its constant tide-locked face
Tugs the sea and me alike
The atoms of our mass
Bound ebb to flow, neap to high
By Newton’s Principia
While Schrödinger’s wistful cat
Waits in later pages
Unknown as yet, and left to pace
In undetermined fate
What am I
When I’m sleeping?
A prism child of night
Splintered into photon dreams
Cradled in hot nebulae
And scattered throughout space
A bleak and cold infinitude
Some billion other worlds
Suspended around other stars
In beginning states of grace
Unseen, like ore in deep, hot veins
Compressed beneath the ages
Until revealed by algorithm
And captured in equation
With Schrödinger’s hapless cat
Purring at my side
Alive and dead, unrealized
An enigma in time’s keeping
Rae Spencer 