It springs up like a vast
 colony of mushrooms. The ballroom 
 leafs out with posters, each one
 with its human nest of bags at the base.
  
 This is how I feel every spring, 
 when the trees leaf out overnight:
 uneasy, as though I’d missed something
 I should have been attending to.
  
 Here the organic growth is thought.
 Here we talk about words we’ve written
 and write down more words to say.
 The ballroom buzzes like a hive.
  
 Paper, internet, brains, devices:
 How long can the vast network hold?
 If it all collapses, will we go back
 to pointing and grunting? I cannot
  
 do anything about it. I’m a mushroom
 in the cluster, a branch, a worker bee. 

UURAF is the annual University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum at Michigan State University. It had over a thousand presenters this year, spread over three floors in the Student Union building.

  
 Four years ago it entered at the foot:
 Waiting in filth to find an open wound,
 Then, like a hookworm, burrowing inside.
  
 But it was just a local rash, an itch,
 On just one foot, the right. We knew
 The body politic could heal itself.
  
 At first it seemed that we were right. The legs
 Kept moving, marching, even when the worm
 Sent out its toxic bans to paralyze
  
 The host. But then the poisons were too strong;
 The liver failed at cleansing the lifeblood
 Of bigotry and hate in daily dose.
  
 And then the heart, which for a while still cried
 With Rachel Maddow, seeing kids encaged,
 Grew numb and stiff, sclerotic at the last.
  
 And then it was the lungs. They couldn’t take
 Another breath of the miasmic air:
 So, clogged with lies, alveoli closed down.
  
 And now the worm has moved into the brain,
 Corkscrewing its way in, a spirochete.
 It’s settled in for life. So do not fear
  
 That it will burst like Alien from the gut.
 It doesn’t want to go. It needs the host.
 Fear rather that tomorrow you may look
  
 In your own mirror and see yellow hair,
 And orange face with dead white eyes, and mouth
 No human ever had: a tapeworm maw. 

NaPoWriMo prompt for Day Three: “a story or action that unfolds over an appreciable length of time.” Much too long, in this case.

 Stand up, we advise. Move around.
 Stay light on your mental feet.
  
 I remember a man in a swamp,
 waist-deep, with a rope, saving an impala.
  
 It’s young and terrified, but it trusts him.
 Or maybe it’s in shock, and he’s the last resort.
  
 He knows the swamp: the sticky weight of words
 that suck you down. You have to keep moving
  
 till you find your feet. Don’t worry 
 about how you look. Mud washes off. 
  
 He tugs on one leg, then another, hoists the back
 end onto slightly firmer swamp. Then hauls
  
 with his own life rope. The impala
 permits this indignity and does not kick.
  
 Now it’s on solid ground. He pulls it upright,
 one leg at a time. It blinks and bounds away.
  
 I hope it will return some day, if only
 for a letter of recommendation. The only way
  
 to get through the swampy part of the semester:
 get down in the mud and struggle
 with your students. Share your own rope. 

Yesterday’s prompt was, “Write a how-to.” And my colleague Matt Rossi had posted on Facebook, How do I get through my grading without getting all grumpy? So this.

 The Undines, the Little Mermaids
 always seem to need a soul,
 marrying or stealing to get it.
  
 I didn’t, even when I sang 
 with Tracey Chapman
 that it was all that I had.
  
 But I needed a lake bed
 to hold that soul 
 like water in cupped hands.
  
 In our beginnings, you wrote 
 that I flowed over you
 and nourished the parched ground.
  
 Did you know then
 how the lake seeks the shore
 curling up to it like a cat on a lap? 

At the beginning of our courtship, my husband Jeff called me Watergirl and I called him Woodland Creature, or wg and wlc. I was reminded of this when yesterday’s NaPoWriMo prompt asked us to imagine ourselves as a historical or mythological figure.

It’s a supervised visitation,

a controlled contact.

Image by Audubon Nature Institute

In France, April Fool is April Fish.

Last week I stayed in New Orleans for the annual conference of the College English Association, and visited the amazing Aquarium of the Americas, whence this reflection.