the traffic running smoothly down Oak, the octopus’s
three-tenths of a second transformation from algae-leaf sprig

to many-tentacled astonishment. I’m the sacs and cells
that brought you into focus, the aqueous humour, the hyaloid canal

that gave you sight. I am every bit of physics–escape velocity,
magnetism (weak and strong), the mechanics of fluids,

the vectors and the vitreous, the noble gases, the birthing
and dying of stars. I am lightning’s formation, pipes and pumps,

pressure and power, the heat that is lost, the voltage rising.
I’m your blood’s pH, the trillions of microbes spinning

and twirling on every inch of your skin, the loud-and-clear-
from-two-miles-away whistling gibbon, the screaming vixen,

howl of the socially-satisfied wolf. All of me summed up
in one small artifact: a pair of fornicating froghoppers

entombed in sap. My sister: the helicopter dropping
5,000 tons of sand and clay and lead. My brothers:

the quarter million enlisted men who climbed
to life-time exposure, received a unique clean up medal.

My children: I bore thousands, each one named Incredulous.
Their children, the owls who fly to their breeding grounds

at the coldest hour of night.