January Acedia, Or Why All the Remainder

pencils from my three children’s thirteen years each of school that were left in desk drawers and book bags are sharpened, but touch no paper save the squares of crossword puzzles; why pens are poised useless in cups with ink steadily drying; why my arms, my wrists, my hands and fingers grind and make coffee, carry laundry and shovel snow, open my laptop and slide the mouse over to Facebook, the BBC, or your blog, but cannot open Microsoft Word or the cover of a black moleskin.

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.