Evening, and mourning another day.
Lips closed. Nostrils flared. An expiration.
H’mm.
Or exhalation? I expire. Do I? Die?
No!
Not yet. I haven’t had my threescore years
and.
Mouth agape now, air flows back, air, in with
it, in, nitrogen, the oxygen, the.
Hold!
Wait for the sustaining chemistry
to do its work! How? God alone knows how.
Deus scientiarum dominus
est. What else am I inhaling? Smoke?
Alas, yes, also carbon dioxide,
with argon, water vapour, and the rest.
I leave the detailing to him or Him
or Her.
Ha.
Eve, our mother.
Out. In.
Here is the rhythm of life, any fool can see that, it’s a
more or less regular iambic meter, a two four at
something like crotchet is three score and ten, it’s a bit fast, that-
I’ll settle down in a minute- I hope- yes, it’s regular
but with irregular rits and ralls, rubato
in response to the natural shocks that flesh is
heir to.
Air into lungs, out again, in. The ins, the outs.
Heart spurts blood out into the aorta,
sucks blood in from the venae cavae.
Out, in.
It’s all about the old in-out. confer
(albeit blushingly)
insertion of the,
into the,
out again,
in.
Out and in again, show, hide, un, til.
Sperm spurts.
What comes next, absint prophylactics,
and how, or even why, I leave to the
dominus scientiarum, whose eyes
did see my substance yet being imperfect.
A cell divides, it seems, whole into halves.
Always it’s binary. Why do they not
divide themselves in three? Why is life
including poor forked homo sapiens
bilateral?
Left and right,
organised around the spinal column.
What if we were tripodic? No animal is, although
there are claims for the kangaroo
with its muscular tail. Tripods are stable,
not so much energy needed for standing;
but on the other hand locomotion more difficult.
Sexsapedal animals, if that’s the word,
(can’t be right, sounds like sex appeal, what is it?)
Ah, hexapedal, thanx, Greek numbering, not Latin,
hexapedal animals I was saying,
insects, they move their feet in threes, apparently,
first one tripod, then the other. So it’s
bi-tripodic motion really, which is a
disguised bipedal motion, which is cheating,
little bastards they are, insects, revolting,
I mean maggots and ugh. Anglers use them,
pierce their loathsome wriggling bodies with hooks,
fling them afar to tempt tench, roach, perch.
Or chub.
We all came out of the water once, our ears
mutated gills, our lungs swim bladders. God,
vide supra, Lord of sciences, of
knowledge, understands, indeed upholds,
it all. If by God
we mean
the actuality of things beyond
our ken. There must be something there.
But does She care?
Air.
In.
H’mm.
Eve.
Evening,
and mourning
another
day

[image: Eve with Apples and Serpent, 2012]