Nucleotides

Striking, the human form
Composed of lines, and curves
Able to stretch, and to lift,
And to dance —

To perceive:  these ears
Discern all manner of
Pitch and timbre,
Routing complex vibrations
Through tiny bones, through fluid,
The spiraling channels of our inner ear
Nerves fire signals to our brain
And we hear — poetry
Music, rhythm
We know our father's voice
From our brother's

And looking deeper
This human form, elegant covering
The materials we consume
Broken down into
Carbon, hydrogen...others;
Deep within every cell, mitochondria
Transform these into
Amino acids
Nucleotides —
And from there!
Tiny miles of a twisting, spiraling chain,
Hidden within the nucleus,
Bewildering double helix:  DNA
Codes for everything we are, were, and will be.

(And not only you and I,
But every living thing:
The dandelions on your lawn
That spider crawling across the ceiling
Even the neighbor's cat
Who comes to visit from time to time...)

In every human cell
Forty-six chromosomes, each
One long string of DNA
Folded and twisting, looped and spiraled,
Genes strung end to end, each
Generating one particular protein.
Some are produced, others not, and
Your face is shaped just so
Your legs, so long
The texture of your hair
From those chains your mother gave you,
And your father as well.
Everything we are
Floating in the nucleus
Tiny miles of encrypted language
Genes composed of nucleotides:
Those the mitochondria made,
Of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen
Of nitrogen and of phosphate —
We are all unique compositions
Based on the same pentatonic scale.

And not just you and I,
But what have we in common
With the night owl
That hunts its mice in the field
Or the purple starfish
Clinging to a rock amidst a
Colony of sea anemones
As the tide splashes about
Full of its own microscopic bits of life —
From the same pentatonic scale,

The nucleotides.
Essence of the DNA structure
Chained together along their
Sugar-phosphate backbone,
Bases linked across the way
To their companion chain,
Adenine with thymine
Guanine to cytosine
A spiraling staircase twisted about its axis,
Like dancers engaged in some profound ritual
Describing the very nature of life,
Matchless choreography directing each step
Promenade:  two columns, hand to shoulder,
Joined arm in arm, each pair
Adenine with thymine
Guanine to cytosine

Fathomless tongue.
These four bases, life's alphabet
Spelling out our identity
Preserving the instructions that
Fashion each protein, and hence, the
Exquisite shadings in your eyes
These gentle hands, worn so
The unmistakable sound of your laughter.

Amidst these folding, twisting strands
Down the center of their spiraled length
Heliocases split apart the chains,
Descending like the shaft of a zipper
Down your jacket front
And two lines diverge.

In the rift
A single enzyme moves along the line,
Touching each base in turn.
Transcribing the chain, it
Builds another strand, RNA:
Like the flower crushed
Yielding its fragrance
So parting, the code is revealed
And RNA carries its message to the ribosome.

Thymine, guanine, thymine
The three-letter word, translated
Names an amino acid —
Adenine, thymine, cytosine, another.
Carefully, in the given sequence,
The ribosome assembles a chain
Which then folds in upon itself, a protein.

Delicate balance.
For what have you and I in common?
Or how do I resemble a tree?
And yet, from these four bases
Of the same pentatonic scale
I have hands —
And hummingbirds fly.

Its task completed, the RNA breaks down,
While the strands that have parted
Join together again
Like water rushing in to fill the void
After a boat has passed.

And no one smiles just like you
Or puts their thoughts together quite the same.
These twisting strands of DNA
Meticulously crafted —
The home you've chosen, your own
Arranged precisely to suit your taste
Unlike any other.
Parting strands revealing their design,
This code that no one else will share.
Proteins balanced perfectly
That you should love the things you do,
Precious work of art.

The violin, had carved through
Painstaking hours
Offering up its voice.

Hold my hand, for we are flesh
And listen to the trees:
They are singing variations
On the same pentatonic theme.

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