Taking a Step Away

Closer, Closer, Forward March! Onward, Upward Ho!
Well maybe yes and maybe not and maybe I don’t know.
The biologist is expert at dissolving life in salines,
Yet instead of frogs and fishes we end up with Petri dishes
Full of caviar and tuna roe and tattered tadpole tailings!

Well that’s what I see anyhow, while looking down at the slide.
I know for sure they’re finding a cure but I miss the pond outside.

I miss the chance to pull away and take a broader view,

The chance to move away from the kill and circle a time or two.

I miss the fuzz on the edge of things, the smear and the smudge and the blur.

A little unsure, a little unclear, a little demure a little less fear,

A sky covered meadow we wandered that year, a picnic lunch in Windermere,

A chance to be who we were.

Great Lawn from the East, August 2010