Sciences

I remember first hearing rumors
of the atom. We are all made up
of crumbs, Q told me
when we were kids.…

One man and one woman park the government Jeep
on the gravel shoulder of the Grand River watershed.
Paired…

The blades like irises turning very fast to see you completely—steel-blue then red where the cut occurs…

Rotor wash, or the downward-flowing
Air by which our helicopters formed
Imprints in the jungle grass beneath
Now stands effectively for Vietnam
Because our understanding of that war
Omitted many things but not the wind
We bowed our heads and fled. In this case we

Refers effectively...

On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.
The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked...

200 cows         more than 600 hilly acres

            property would have been even larger
had J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for
                waste from its Washington Works factory
where J was employed        
       ...

How easy it is to lose oneself
in a kelp forest. Between
canopy leaves, sunlight filters thru
the water surface; nutrients
bring life where there’d other-
wise be barren sea; a vast eco-
system breathes. Each
being being being’s link.

This century is younger than me.
It dresses itself
in an overlong coat of Enlightenment thinking
despite the disappearing winter.
It twirls the light-up fidget spinner
won from the carnival of oil economies.
In this century, chatbots write poems
where starlings wander from their murmuration
into the denim-thick...

We've always been out looking for answers,
telling stories about ourselves,
searching for connection, choosing
to send out Stravinsky and whale song,
which, in translation, might very well be
our undoing instead of a welcome.

We launch satellites, probes, telescopes
unfolding like origami, navigating
geomagnetic storms, major disruptions.
Rovers...

I have built a machine to visit the stars.
I have built a machine to outlast the stars.
There is a glass ball inside a copper egg.

There are dynamos and turbines, Tesla coils and magnets.
There is a boy in Brooklyn, Wisconsin
and a...

Here is the encyclopedia where I learn first position
Here is where I begin ballet: at 12, in a class of 6-year-olds
Here is where I get my period
Here is where I substitute dance for childhood
Here is studio “B” where I practice
Here...

A body must remind itself
to keep living, continually,
throughout the day.

Even at night while sleeping,
proteins, either messenger, builder,
or destroyer, keeps busy

transforming itself or other substances.
Scientists call these reactions
—to change their innate structure,
dictated by DNA—cellular frustration,

a cotton-cloud nomenclature for crusade,
combat, warfare, aid,...

1. Who needs water with so many wings?
2. A Dewey Decimal System for feathers.
3. The librarian in the trees says, “Quiet!”
4. "I felt an intimacy with [birds]...bordering on frenzy [that] must accompany my steps through   life." –John James Audubon.
5. Bird...

Lately, I've enlisted an app on my phone to keep track
            of the time that I can't witness—it maps the dark blanket
of missing consciousness, a jagged line. Best night/worst night,

it says, though I remember neither....

We know the last stuffed specimen of the dodo burned
             in 1755, though Wikipedia's "Dodo: Talk" page shows
sources conflict on whether the fire was an accident

or intentional. They say it had started to smell. The...

Diagram of a diagram: if properly decoded,
                                                                   ...

The research center is a cube building with a neat chimney plunged into the right side. The researchers are covered head to toe in white cloth. Unrelatedly, they are sexless. They don't draw lakes in forests. They don't play classic...

Vigilant for so long, 
I am full.                                                                     ...