A Farewell to NIH…
Apoptotic Adios
It’s so easy to miss when you lose yourselfin bleeding bureaucracy, budget headaches,
death by a thousand papercuts…
Maybe it fell through the cracks among interesting conflicts,
or it’s endlessly-circling-hell, desperate for parking.
Perhaps expired I.D. left it mummified
in a peripheral pedestrian security cage
(PPSC) off Battery Lane.
But it’s probably still alive someplace here,
so I frisk the grounds; peruse the faces;
look in the labs; scour the clinics and wards;
feel once more for a pulse.
Not asking, just feeling one last time
for the poetry of the place.
Working late, a colleague calls – Look at that Moon!
I look out, as the Worm Moon floods the grounds.
And later, heading home, pass a wild spring mix
of thoughtful faces. Late night labwork--
the ultimate meltingpot. Some will keep digging
all night for illumination.
And sure enough, in some lab,
peering in yet another section,
she finally sees it! How it works!
She holds the moment tenderly as a newborn.
Humbled and exalted,
first witness to a tiny face of Creation.
Next morning I’m back,
¡Hola! (The cleaning lady tutors my Spanish.)
I pass through the waiting room:
faces of faith -- here for a dip
in the current-swirl of science,
their “last best hope.” Perhaps today
the angel of insight
will swoop down, troubling the pool
of knowledge
to heal against all odds
through this awkward lab-coated agent.
Or, to translate:
Sometimes when Bethesda’s moon is just so,
the membrane between spirit and science
grows riddled with rafts of traversing protein filaments--
hope, discovery, compassion, creation, insight.
So when I say Adios, and walk away for good,
I’ll try not to squish the worms. I know
somehow, as with the death of my beloved,
tears and years will gently debride
the grief, and leave behind
the poetry of the place.
---Celia Hooper---
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