Thursday, December 22, 2016

A Poem for The Gene

How does a writer start a book?


Especially when it is a book about something
as complex as the story of what we are?
Of what makes us into us?
Of proteins and phenotypes.
Genes and enzymes.
RNA, DNA,
ribosomes, hemoglobin,
eugenics, natural selection,
genomic coding,
genomic engineering,
genetic disorders,
embryonic development,
Crick and Watson and Franklin
and the laws of
heredity.
. . .








. . .
How does a writer start a book? And keep it moving.
Start with Mendel and end with

How does he
keep it moving through
discussions of Darwin,
who was not bothered
by human descent from
apelike ancestors?

and the horrors of Mengele, 
whose putrefied experiments,
masquerading as science,
no scientist
could take seriously?

And right up to
the aspirations of science to
sequence our selves?

I have no idea how it's done.


(And then, there's this:)