Academic journal article Anglican Theological Review
Acts of the Apostles
Article excerpt
- 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. …