A DEATH 
For my father, Richard Lang, 1918-2004 
 
It was particular as an iridescent silver spot 
on the underside of the left hindwing 
of a great spangled fritillary, nectaring 
on bright pink thistle prickly as a sea urchin 
on a stalk in the middle of a field in Wyoming. 
 
It was universal as the helical ladder of DNA 
that instructs the desert paintbrush to make 
red pigment, the leaves of the Carolina geranium 
to cleave into frilly green fingers, the black- 
throated gray warbler to sing its wheezy song. 
 
It was easy as the flight of a tree swallow seeking 
bayberries in winter; the sway of redwood twigs, 
rimmed with flat needles, in summer wind; 
a fertilized ovum dividing into a hollow ball 
of lucent cells programmed for consciousness. 
 
It was complicated as billions of neurons 
forming a lacework in the human cerebrum 
or the universe listening for the tune 
of general relativity curving through space- 
time, which makes every particle dance. 
 
It was swift as a transport chain raising electrons 
in a chloroplast to ever higher energy levels 
to produce ATP, or a sodium-potassium pump 
exchanging twenty thousand ions across 
a neuron membrane in a millionth of a second. 
 
It was slow as the birth of a spiral galaxy 
at the edge of the universe, condensing from 
the primordial ocean of hydrogen and helium 
to create a dazzling core encircled by 
a pinwheel of red, blue, white and yellow stars. 
 
It was inevitable as the day the universe lit up 
after a hundred million years of blackness, 
as clouds of gas collapsed and ignited 
into flaming balls, crushing atoms into elements 
necessary for hemoglobin, skin and bones. 
 
It was impossible as the intricate movements 
of millions of creatures since the dawn of life, 
each one finding its only mate to enable 
my father’s life to blaze for a moment, eons 
later, on a blue-green planet, in a sea of stars. 
 
All poems from God of the Jellyfish (Cervena Barva Press), Copyright (c) 2007, by Lucille Lang Day

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© Copyright, Lucille Lang Day.
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