Science

What do we have

In a glass of water?

What would they see—

Our scientists, through their eyeglasses?

Transparent liquid phase, Hydrogen-Oxygen,

or the whole universe?

Did a Mamenchisaurus

drink from the same glass as this?

A glass clear as vision, ample for all of them:

Chemists, paleontologists, physicists.

As they plunge in, a splash—

they are that kind of species, you know.

We, too.

Trapped in those tangled membranes, faces

unrecognizable. A tide

takes us elsewhere; the water gets warmer

as we forget. Our limbs grow and we let the sun in.

What’s forgotten: in one explosion, we occured

when the space was freezing. Snuggling

with all our elements,

we imagined many eyes

that would one day name our darkness.

On that same spot, all of us

imagined heat. Some imagined

you and I, with warm, separate hearts

and brains that imagine. Some even imagined

Raising a gun to the fevered heart

And some just imagined a glass of water.