- for Trisha Davis

Mitiosis. meiosis. the molecule.

How does the spirit build with these and rule?

The spirit does not build or toil or spin,

And what does is more curious within

Than anything the spirit might inhabit.

Redness of the eye of the white rabbit.

Or the bullying blue jay, making up for meekness

In some Jurassic incarnation, sleekness

Itself in its knife-thrown flight through leaves.

To live for appetite and offspring. To dive

Into the centrosome where proteins pull

A shape into being, the mitotic spindle.

Two claws letting go, two sets of tines

Forged in withdrawal, like exploding mines.

And named for something no one sees today

Except in museums, the old household display.

Perched on the spinning wheel, still enchanted

And by a carded memory still haunted.

The spirit in the machine, the working ghost

We ask to turn our straw prayers into gold.

Soon where all intangibles resided

Knowledge will show all outside insided.

Measurable and sensible and known

Where soul had sunk its shaft a living bone.

And if the continuity of this

Is folded like an origami fish

Into the light we see it with and in

To the dancing floor on the slick head of a pin.

So be it. Let dimensions multiply.

Incinerate the soul and never die.

The grasp exceeds the reach, and now we know

There is no self for selflessness to show.

All terms for the invisible are nil.

Kill and it seems you do not really kill

But set another process on its way.

The dormant animation of decay.

Could this be what Arjuna understood

When Krishna told him fire, there is no death. …