Trees of Life

I saw on the news

that scientists have learned

to grow the cells of a heart muscle

in the cellulose left behind

when you suck out

everything that makes

a leaf of spinach

     a leaf of spinach.

Hollowed out, limp white, the ghosts

of greenery can be seeded

with the tiniest dose

of humanity, a scattering

of frightened cells that grasp

the vascular scaffold

and cling for dear life —

these wisps of blood remember

another time when we huddled like this,

against the walls of ventricular caves

back before time had a name —

our cells huddle and cling

until plant and muscle merge

and chlorophyll learns

to give up sunlight and sustain

itself on the thu-thump thu-thump

of pulse and bloodflow.

It turns out you can transform

all sorts of vegetation into veins: parsley,

sweet wormwood, arterial jewelweed —

even the straight column from twig or stick

can be worried down to translucent shell

and taught to become a vessel of blood.

That night I slept and dreamt

of red vines that crept aortic at my ankles,

of lush capillary jungles, flooded, throbbing,

of a garden of wild muscle —

a place where the sun rises cardiac,

red on petals engorged, a place where,

when rain showers gently down,

you can stroll among the stems,

run the tips of your fingers across

the veins of the leaves,

and feel heartbeats in the blossoms,

in the four-chambered pistil and stamen,

in the breath of pollen, a mist like copper.

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