Science in meter and verse
Credit: Joel Sartore National Geographic Photo Ark
Edited by Dava Sobel
In a year of panic, envy
any creature who estivates
in the heat. Line a cavity
with mucus & hunker down.
A bunker hardens around you.
Watch the river shrivel
without worry. In the 1950s,
humans dug up backyards,
poured concrete, stocked
canned goods. The lungfish
feeds not off Spam but from
its own muscle, digests
itself into slime & vitamin.
When the rivers flood again,
emerge from your opposite
hibernation. Your legs don’t walk,
but they taste. Masticate, mash,
gulp, slurp. Scientists say
you are in a constant state
of agitation, but they are just
jealous. They too want to touch
everything again. To pull
themselves from the muck
& mire. They watch you
gulp a goldfish. Exhale orange
flakes. Swim between stars
in this little galaxy, the one
you built wholly from yourself.
This article was originally published with the title “Lesson from the West African Lungfish (Protopterus annectens)” in Scientific American 325, 1, 24 (July 2021)
doi: 10.1038/scientificamerican0721-24
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Christina Olson’s poetry collections include Terminal Human Velocity and Before I Came Home Naked, as well as the chapbooks Weird Science and Rook & The M.E. Her chapbook The Last Mastodon won a 2019 Rattle Chapbook Prize. She has drawn life lessons from a variety of animals and plants, both alive and fossilized.
Credit: Nick Higgins
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