Remember Daniel

   They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever & ever. . . . go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest . . . Daniel 12: 3 & 13
   
dear friends and family, Christmas 2010:

on the lip of the river
see Daniel,
palms redolent of lion,
the King's seer
puzzling disaster.
A figure something like a man,
clad in linen and light,
opens his mouth.
A galaxy of voices roars
planting and harvesting of nations,
whirlwind and horsemen and ships,
trouble
that stretches beyond all squinting eyes.
Daniel marks the answer to how long--
a time, times, and a half--
then closes up the book,
sealed to the time of the end.

This single instance Daniel cannot see
beyond the bronze man straddling the river.
He speaks our sightless hearts' words,
I don't understand.

The answer is 
secret, all sealed shut.
But the answer is also
go on your way;
guide toward the right path;
look forward
to bright shining.

PS to Nobel Prize in Chemistry

One of the aforementioned prize-winning chemists has been messing around with palladium’s catalytic properties since the 1960’s. Back then he used palladium to more quickly link a ring of carbon atoms to a short piece of carbon to produce styrene. You know, styrene, polystyrene, plastic—the messianic material of our generation? Remember sitting around the campfire drinking cocoa, then tossing those Styrofoam cups into the fire? Their shriveling hypnotized us as they melted in the embers. The vaporous stench watered our eyes and singed our lungs.

So, we manufacture the little sponge’s enemy-killer, to fend off the stalker that seeks us as we play and breathe, as we consume our daily minimums in the 2000’s.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry, October 2010

Palladium-catalyzed cross-couplings in organic synthesis

Today on NPR’s Morning Edition the Nobel Prize in chemistry was announced. It was awarded for the discovery of the above-noted process which allows a substance found in nature to be easily and quickly made in the lab. The compound, discodermolide, is produced by a sponge, a creature at the simplest end of the Animal Kingdom. Sponges are of the phylum Porifera, which describes their biology aptly—they have no circulatory or digestive systems and survive by absorbing nutrients and oxygen as water rushes through their porous bodies. The sponge of interest, Discodermia dissoluta, inhabits the Caribbean waters and links together carbon molecules in a way to make this discodermolide which happens to poison its predators.

As I listen to the report, I imagine there was a rush to analyze discodermolide to see if it might mortify any of our major enemies, perhaps cancer? The compound does have anti-cancer properties, but the harvesting of enough dissoluta for widespread chemotherapy would be difficult, if not impossible, while giving it top billing on the endangered species list. The chemists hit their labs and set about synthesizing the compound. They were successful. Three Homo sapiens were awarded the prize for their method which allows discodermolide to be made more quickly and easily using palladium to speed up the carbon bonding process.

I am grateful for the creativity and persistence of these researchers as my dad sits in the oncology treatment room every Thursday this month with the cancer poisons flowing into one of his left arm veins. The radio commentator concludes:

You know, nature has figured out a lot of really remarkable reactions. And the trick, as you say, is to put them into some kind of format where you can use them in a commercial process and make enough of it to use.

We have the trick down. Dedicated and stubborn men and women racked their brains, spent years under the fluorescents in the organic lab, and found the format to create the commercial process for the manufacture of these compounds. Like these dogged scientists, did nature figure out the initial process that enabled a sponge to form a complex enemy-repelling poison? Does nature possess that kind of intellectual capacity and imagination? Isn’t there perhaps One who exceeds our organic chemists in creativity and intellect, who crafted the poison-producing sponges of the Caribbean as well as the Nobel-winning scientists; the One not far from each of us, in whom we live, and move, and are?

August Wind

The night is bound tightly over us,

an aging wool comforter

ripe and suffocating.

We pad a slow circuit

from rag rug to pine boards

around and around

until we pitch dizzy

out the open back door.

The night sky is aflame.

At the back of the house 

the basil plants twitch and laugh, 

jostle each other.

They toss their silken scarf toward us 

and watch our heavy cloak 

fall away.

Their garment twirls and wraps,

winds up our nostrils

tender leaves expanding,

the king's breath, 

in our sodden lungs.

Georgetown Bridge, Jo Daviess County

The Georgetown Bridge has buried its face in the Apple River. Down from the gravel of the Georgetown Road the rough planks twist and sway. They wind a path over empty pastureland, into the water's swirl, and disappear in darkness, caught in river bottom's grip. The iron railings and supports are wrapped in funereal wilted grass, green cornstalks already beginning their brown barrenness, and tree branches that joined the bullying mass. The limestone pillar mid-river is a lone tower in the rushing water. Green grasses blow from its rocky recesses and a swallow darts in and away from its stones, glances for a quick morsel here, and there: an easy day, a normal day of foraging.

The abandoned goose nest has been swept off the top of the pillar. Next year this bridge's pair will urge and rue their first goslings' spread wings. The goose will brood undisturbed by walker or pick-up, jogger or tractor lament. The goslings will break out, receive uninterrupted nourishment, and venture from the nest accompanied only by gander warnings, shadows of swallow and red-wing, watery callings.

On the far bank, just downstream of the fallen bridge, an enormous cottonwood is laid out, resting from its rush of the bridge, pushed by gathering waters to carry that lofty flier off its rocky pier. The tree is stripped of small branches and green leaves, only its deeply ridged skeleton remains, its upper limbs five gnarly fingers crawling over the muddy bank and dipping into water's edge.

Weep for this hundred-year-old bridge, for the hundreds of crossings we have made, will make no longer. Hear the planks' clicks, the quick squeaks and deep clattering of its iron body, weary of wind and waters, sun and ice, as we pad across its boards. In thick frost, we place each foot deliberately on the coated wood. When the valley is filled with fog, the river clucks to us; we tread in blindness over the smooth planks. In summer we swim the thick air, corn and soy respiration slick on our skin; we stop mid-stream and watch the slow-flowing water, look for swimmers hiding under dark banks. When the dried cornstalks' cacophonous opera is cut off in late autumn, a yellow coyote stands motionless in the stubble, eying us, all of us nervous.

We are stranded now, unable to cross out of our country and into that other where river gathers swift and kingfisher, coon and coyote, where oak emperor reigns, whispering amid the windrows.

The Little Tomato

It is midsummer, and noon.
The sharp scent of tomato leaf,
a brightness on the plant
pulls me to it.
Bristled backs brush my hand
as I pluck the red sphere.
My lips and tongue
quiver at its smooth approach.
My teeth break through.
The hot juices spill out.
A crashing percussion fills my head
and a piquant spice my mouth.
My eyelids fall shut.
I stop mid-step on the back stair
shaken like a rope toy between the puppy's teeth
out of my Escherian cubicle
and into a pleasured realm.

Making Jam

I crush quarts of raspberries into a red slurry that, when combined with sugar and pectin, will become a ripe berry, just picked, upon your tongue in mid-winter. Around Thanksgiving Day, or sometime in January, your eyes will be closed and your tongue caressing the thick sweetness slathered on a slice of warm bread. When you look up, raspberry vines pricking sweaty legs and arms, Japanese beetles crazy about mating and nothing else, and a plump red berry falling, will have joined you at table. You will long for July.

What a Luxury, for Thirty Years

to scooch my numb toes

across a field of cotton

to shelter

under your warm limbs

to wake

from the approaching blade,

the children snatched by strangers,

and pull your roundness

into the trough of my belly

to quell

the steel pan's pounding,

the writhing dance of sponge wings

between my ribs

with your sleep soaked body

to dream

a long line of nights

each ending at ocean's edge,

a gray light,

a rolling over,

the opening of eyes.

Drought Upon Us

We wander from book to theory, from politician to righteous philanthropist. We lope from the weaving of the planets to the growth of our cells in the Petri dish. We are ravenous, throats dry and hacking, searching the nascent wilds of the rain forest, the high-tech dark matter lab. We range, faint of hope and heart, feeble in body and spirit, just like Amos, the prophet, wrote nearly three thousand years ago:

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.

Lord, spare us this lack that is at our heels. Don't take your words away from us. Let us pile them to the roof, stacks running out into our yards, our garages, our parking areas. Let us quench our parched throats and and eat our fill each day. We will get to work with sated hearts and purpose—plotting the data accurately, chronicling appearances of new particles, maybe just getting out of bed, speaking a kind word. Keep our eyes reading and seeing, our ears hearing and understanding. Lay your words deep, deep, sear them upon our hearts, our minds, our lips.

First Mulberry

The first mulberry has dropped.

On the path,

not yet stained by tree blood and seed,

a lone black ant rushes

around the sapphire.

Like Aaron measuring Moses' ascent

into Sinai's mystery,

it hesitates at jewel's edge,

antennae flush 

and scissored jaws flexing,

then hurries away,

forgetting to bow and tip

the trail bright

with essence.

Where We Live

The September sun glances

over her shoulder

at the community building,

the parking lot full of pick-ups

and trailers, one marked across its length,

Full Cry & American Cooner Magazine.

Banners on the fence

announce the weekend event,

but if you see those letters

running dark across this page,

your vision of our village—

nestled in the arms of oak-hickory,

grown on the islands

the ice mass drifted around,

where artists and dairy farmers

resuscitate rural America,

where, (as the tourist video tells it),

the living is easy—

will be shattered.

But perhaps their escape to the page

will make you lean back and laugh,

a roiling belly laugh of desire

to live 
where we

Welcome Coon Hunters.

From a long sleep, I wake.

We guided the '54 Ford Consul off the Wyoming interstate in August, 1977, hauled our zip-together burgundy bags into the sage scrub, and lay down in the cold. We fixed our eyes to the brilliant map just beyond our outstretched arms and fell into sleep.

I wake today, the same man zipped in beside me, and open my eyes. This is what I see.