Biosphere 2: One Poem by Alison Hawthorne Deming

Morning in the Lung

Link by link the rusted
            chain
releases as morning
            begins
to warm the enclosure
            where
psychotria, ficus and
            euphorbiaceae
transpire. This is the experimental
            world
under glass, space frame
            white as starlight
glass mottled with what
            rain
prolonged drought
            will allow
in our desert out there
            but in here . . .
clank clank. . . the links
            of rusted chain
release adjusting to atmospheric
            pressure
that rises and falls
            with the sun
three acres of manufactured world
            oh little planet
of ingenuity and audacious hope
            where a botanist
might spend nine months
            keying
and counting and naming every
            plant
in the tropical forest
            where
the sandbox tree disperses
            seed
by exploding its fruit          
            into space
where the marine biologist might put
            10,000
red hermits into the ocean
            to clean out
brown algae. Oh little planet. . .
            clack clack
the experiment breathes and drips
            and disperses
data into the throat of
            the future.
Link by link this
            organ
becomes organism
            no artifice
hidden: the technosphere
            a complexity
underpinning and overriding
            the random.
Clack clack. . .
            the diaphragm
rises link by link
            the building
listens to itself
            breathe.