Biosphere 2: One Poem by Wendy Burk

Biosphere 2: James D’Elia’s Duet 

James Angelo D’Elia I call the Cactus Wren
            who, upon squeezing into the desert biome through mesh
            and cambering a clumsy nestosphere,
            no longer worries about being plotted onto a graph, or noticed by anyone.
Science is a muscle waiting for small alterations,
            not big— 
            a human on the walkway as invisible as a callus!
So that might be you piloting your wheelchair down the hill toward me,
Space traveler,
Heart in the heart— 
Body in the body of the Biosphere,
            as every visitor hands an invisible body into the airlock,
            the sun-swept biome where outside most enters in
            and inside most resembles outside, lie
            and truth of our experimental lives.
James Angelo D’Elia inspects a set of plastic tubs,
            uses his beak to think about mycorrhizae,
            translation: duet of the life of water and earth
Flowing into rhizomes,
            translation:
Roots.
We all have them.
Ashes, ashes, ocean.