because this planet
requires me daily
to suspend my disbelief
because madagascar exists
because there is
an amazonian waterbug
that can eat a pirhana
because of mitosis
meiosis
and
parthenogenesis
because of the praying mantis
outside my window
those swallows
that miss the ground
every time they swoop
and the cat who returns
after a month
from who knows where
because of the nazca lines
pyramids
mounds and henges
all built here
by people from here
(with no help from saturn)
because it suited them
to expand
their own notions of how much
the word “human”
could contain
because we haven’t caught back up to them
because of hurricanes
that swat human arrogance
faster than giants ever could
because there is no getting past
the housefly –the eyes compounded,
the lead-glass wings
what is more fantastic than how sleep
deadens nothing inside the body
how we live
in spite of brain death
every time we sneeze
how every step
is a controlled fall
all of it science
none of it fiction
Dark Matter 
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:42 am
Thanks for this…I’m glad someone found it; it’s a piece I’m fond of, fond enough of to have kept coming back to it although it was originally a throwaway…finally got around to some more editing.
I never define words in poems, unless for some reason the process of definition becomes part of the poem itself. That’s why we have dictionaries…
😉
September 1st, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Very nice.
I liked that you worked in such words as mitosis, parthenogenosis, amazonian, and nazca that I rarely find in poetry.
Also, I appreciated your examples, and that you didn’t explain mitotis, meiosis and parthenogenesis.
Thanks also for avoiding certain flying bees, although from the first few lines, they were flying through the back of my mind as I read.