What DNA Knows
What is death to us? We've heard that myth,
a ghost story to tell around a camp fire.
We're too busy to think. Our copies constantly
clamor around our waists like children. They rush
from their cramped classrooms into the red light
of the first time—wanting a push on the swings.
Surrounded by salty currents, how can we ask them
to stay close? They backstroke, flipstroke, frontstroke
toward the wide mouth of the deep where they break
into form. They mortar. They solder. They tower.
They make us proud. And what is birth to us?
Nothing and everything. We are one thing:
desire. Isn't that what all gods are?
More green, more grow, more grass.
We direct "circle time" every
second. Criss-cross, apple-sauce, we'll sing-song
to them, pointing to the picture book that instructs:
Initiation, Elongation, Termination. We know who
can sit together and who can't keep their hands
to themselves. So, we have an order: T and A.;
C and G. Our voice drones on and on,
a push, a pull, a parcel of wet letters to
the messenger who waits in the hall, ready
to run and weave, to repeat and repeat and repeat.
Copyright Credit: Charlotte Pence, "What DNA Knows" from Code. Copyright © 2020 by Charlotte Pence. Reprinted by permission of Black Lawrence.
Source: Code (Black Lawrence, 2020)