Joanie Mackowski

Cells Speaking

 

You, on the line between a storm

and a fingerprint. Taking the view

 

from atop the five hills of your brain as

atop the seven hills of Rome, you ease

 

out your hours, a lily pad afloat

on us, on 100 trillion nanograms

 

of anonymity. Your skin

laps the shore of your bones, eroding

 

the difference. If your brain could glide

from your skull and into 

 

that mud puddle as a cloud eases from 

horizon to swan adrift 

 

on the pond, would you feel so 

particular? Might you take the stumbling path 

 

toward concentric consciousness, you

a composite swan afloat on 100 trillion

 

nanograms of composite swans? Clinging

to the rocks, you're a critical yet

 

articulate mass, hour after hour of errant 

coffee cups and broken eyeglasses, 

 

the bracken of your tasseled 

nerves, saucers of blood, a see-saw

 

reciprocity of oxygens, carbons, pots 

and pans full of snow and the mindless

 

crochet of dna: still clinging,

you're an animate grave 

 

slipping under waves of data: a swarm 

of zeroes cohered to gaze

 

at the hornbeams waving their gypsy

moth larvae and serrate leaves 

 

out the window while crows pluck and 

flock like a massive black 

 

amoeba. Does it hurt not to feel

so particular? To revel in this that

 

ravels you—grave flux flecks the surface 

of your goings out and comings in; 

 

you're the gleam in our eye, the reflection 

swimming face down on the oblivious 

 

pool where bright orange carp sway

such capable O-mouths about

 

some mosquito larvae, engulfing and blurring 

amid the blare of all this breathing.