Tissue Culture

Some hearts dissolve in one day.
Their many families of cells live on
inside incubators.
Myocytes growing in petri dishes through winter.
Invisible scaffolding guides their migrations,
nomads searching once again for each other.
They do not forget where they come from.
When they meet, they join,
beating in unison.

The student checks their pulse
at noon and at midnight,
notes changes in morphology,
new cell-cell contacts.
He does not notice
the sugar ant
dragging a black hair
into the crack in the floor.
Who knows how far back down.

Food for the Queen.
Or maybe digested into glue
to plug a growing void in the wall.
Or to tie our breath
to the other side of the wind.

Copyright © 2007 Robert Pesich All rights reserved
from The Bitter Oleander
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission