Tuesday, April 08, 2014

The Laboratory



What does science mean, when we remove it
from the laboratory and place it on the kitchen
table, beside the apples, the morning paper,
a cup of coffee, pen for the crossword puzzle,
a paperclip, a strayed scarf, a half-charged
cell phone, crumbs, wine stain, the phone bill,
faux flower arrangement, stick-it notes on
yellow paper, the phone book, a dozen words
still rumbling in the stomach of creation?

Science arrives late, after the experiments,
the white papers, the controls, the nod
to bureaucracy, the need to keep people
safe, to prevent their deaths while letting
them die.  Science is as much a game as
the gladiator, the forum — a catch for
the eye, a distraction, a knife into the
abdomen of normalcy — a battle cry of better.

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