Tiny Landscapes
I fly, hawk-like,
and look down
the river over
a pink countryside landscape
and a graceful estuary
with sandbanks
as if it were low tide.
Wing shaped river islands
dot the waterway
and on the south side,
the arrangement of cells
is a calm, orderly queue.
The hematoxylin and eosin stains
reveal nuclei and cytoplasm
that line the ducts,
chaste and placid.
Swinging north, I cross
the river and hover
over a different sort of landscape,
one with a frenetic feel
where cells are densely packed.
I swoop down low
until I float above a spit of land
that, from the shore, spreads
into the river where serpentine chromosomes
on spindle fibers choreograph cell division. Some
dividing cells are much larger than others.
The lakes here have pulled up
their beaches and now
have a jagged look.
No longer are vistas
of river deltas, marshes, and
atolls visible, but
only mayhem on that slice
of your breast
beneath the lens.
I fly, hawk-like,
and look down
the river over
a pink countryside landscape
and a graceful estuary
with sandbanks
as if it were low tide.
Wing shaped river islands
dot the waterway
and on the south side,
the arrangement of cells
is a calm, orderly queue.
The hematoxylin and eosin stains
reveal nuclei and cytoplasm
that line the ducts,
chaste and placid.
Swinging north, I cross
the river and hover
over a different sort of landscape,
one with a frenetic feel
where cells are densely packed.
I swoop down low
until I float above a spit of land
that, from the shore, spreads
into the river where serpentine chromosomes
on spindle fibers choreograph cell division. Some
dividing cells are much larger than others.
The lakes here have pulled up
their beaches and now
have a jagged look.
No longer are vistas
of river deltas, marshes, and
atolls visible, but
only mayhem on that slice
of your breast
beneath the lens.
Judge’s comments:
This vivid poem ensures that I will never go in for a routine mammogram without thinking of cellular breast tissue as complex estuary. Brilliant imagery under the microscope here.
Louhi Pohjola
Louhi was born in Montreal, Canada, to Finnish immigrant parents. She was a cell and molecular biologist before teaching sciences and humanities in a small high school in southern Oregon. She is an avid fly-fisherwoman and river rock connoisseur and is obsessed with black holes and octopi. Louhi lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and her temperamental terrier. The latter thinks that he is a cat.