Scientist Atop Mountain
I stood at the top of the mountain
Giddy, grinning— panting like a fiend
And thought of O2 sat.,
Allostery,
Polyporphyrin rings
And, in time, I thought of bottomlessness,
Half-filled glasses
Stars exploding through the ineffable blackness
And thought, underneath it all,
What’s the vastness even mean?
I began climbing slowly down from the ego of my dream
And asked
What for?
Nothing more
But a flag stuck in the ground?
To calculatingly defy gravity
As it mercilessly tugs us down?
And then I wondered, ponderously:
Am I a prophet
Or a god?
Is there a defined mind to our brain?
Dimension to our façade?
A man behind the curtain?
A voice within the sky?
An ultimate time and place?
An adequate answer to “why?”
I sat on the mountain, tortured
Like the archetypally wise
And knew then that all life’s purpose
Had been imparted through desperate lies.
--
Note to those not familiar with Biochemistry:
The first stanza refers to hemoglobin's decrease in oxygen affinity in response to high altitude/ low atmospheric pressure. This is accomplished through the molecule's allosteric conformation change. Hemoglobin's molecular structure consists of a porphyrin ring.
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