Science

The country's full of flies. I hang a bag of pesticide
from a tree so that the cow can walk back and forth and rub.

There is a glacier in the mountains above town.
fall and tumble, but every year the ice recedes.

Some laugh to see slugs copulate, hanging by threads from trees.
Others say this is not so much funny as perverse.

The honeybee's enemies nestle in her hair. Hungry,
they tickle her mouth. She feeds them sweet nectar.

Angels, pictured as both male and female, engage in neither
photosynthesis nor hererotrophic acts, and reproduce asexually.

There is a star so magnetic that at the distance of the moon
Its attractive power would rearrange the molecules in our bodies.

Archaeologists believe that certain delicate phials
found in Roman ruins were meant to hold tears.

--- From Some Church
David Romtvedt
©2005 Milkweed Editions