Anatomy of human structure
Poetry of nerves and impulses enrapture
Temple of parietal bone that beats
Carpal bone pleats
Integumentary system perspires
Nervous system inspires
Circulatory system pumps
Digestive system lumps
All other systems function
When poetry is not in sanction
This morbid fascination
My unending procrastination
I hold out for everything
And come up with nothing
My nightshade heart
Plays it’s part
A special place
Not made of arterial lace
Or venous denim or integumentary leather
Made to endure every weather
I hold our for a dark heart like mine
One made not to sparkle, not to shine
To a dark heart, these battle scars are fine
To a dark heart, I will be thine.
Devonian birthed an innocent beach
down at the delta of a river great.
Compressed and oppressed by sediment weight,
sand became stone hidden far from life's reach.
A northern ice-angel came to impeach
the cloak of silt atop the stone's pate.
Leaving exposed in a fixed angry state
labyrinths and crevices bred of the breach.
But soon upon the sedimentary,
dampened and moist facing east and north,
spread verdant moss and ethereal fern.
The friendlier integumentary
fed roots of cherry and beech bringing forth
flight that ascended to Holocene's turn.
Ann Silverthorn 1995
This poem is about Panama Rocks, formed by a glacier, in upstate New York.
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