Poem 50

I did pretty well in high school biology, but the genetics unit was a bit of a challenge for me. I couldn't tell you the difference between anaphase and telophase without looking it up, but I still know the difference between mitosis and meiosis (Thanks Bill Wagstaff!). It struck me how our cells spend so much time dividing, that at our smallest level of aliveness we are never still.

The part in this poem about cells dividing came from another poem that was foundering in my practice file for a while.

Moving Out

Bleach hands, cardboard hands,
they’ve taped and labeled
and signed a new lease.
Now they roll the rented dolly
stacked with the TV
up the ramp to the truck.
I repeat the trip for kitchen,
bath, CDs + DVDs,
and other boxes: harvests
and seeds of rooms.
Each fits somehow,
even the last junk boxes
I leave open in the back
because, who has time?

I shutter the truck, lock,
and go back in for
a last look at
carpet scarred by furniture
pressed into the fiber.
There are fewer wounds
left after scrubbing
and checking.
The gash of dust
between fridge and counter
closed as the vacuum
attachment soothed.
It was easy to let the place hurt
these years, now
I apologize with floor wax
and Windex.
Can’t be too thorough:
I massage patching
compound into the wall,
healing the wound
of a thumbtack.

Strange how we
leave places, how cells divide -
secret divorce we file for
on day one.
We grow by falling apart,
and hoping genes left hurting,
will mean new agreements.
The charts of the phases,
mitosis, chromosomes,
we learned in school
showed two of everything
before the split, like
for a day or two,
new keys meeting the old
on our rings.