Your replicating cells divide
my life. Books warns I may not
love you at first, but how not love
this ordinary magic
cells wild with separate lives?
Though you trespass here,
I welcome you. I succumbed to whims
that vanished with morning,
appeared on the crest of decisions
and stayed, wandering in the ark.
Tonight you grow as you will never
grow again. Like a lizard.
undifferentiated cells: leg and hand,
primitive heart and gills.
You are a menagerie of prehistoric
change and necessity.
All this day I have been sick
with the life of you, who are a stranger
to me, distant as Neptune,
mysterious as Juno, small nova
on my horizon, swelling
toward your hour.
July 1989