If, on a bird-chirped spring day or
if, on a sky-soaked summer afternoon,
my father as a young boy set out
into the forest in search of ants or
beetles to add to his delicate collections,
& if suddenly the world silenced
when he knelt to the earth to look
at the skin of an ant & if warmth
spread through him as if there were a sun
in his belly & if the silence burst
into a symphony of bird aria oak
rustle cricket song that swelled & softened & swelled
& swelled & swelled & if this song
goes on in my father’s now 60-something
year-old ears, what would it mean to be Orpheus?
If my father can kneel & silence a forest,
then set it alight with its own song, how did he
become the scientist, and I the poet?