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.