The Atoms of Our Hearts

When I recently downloaded a tulip photo from wikipedia
onto my book blog, my husband Gerry said,
"You should take your own photographs of our own tulips!"
So I gave it a try! My results:


I like the way, in the following passages,
we humans share our bodies with the world,
our atoms with the sun,
and our time with the galaxies!
from The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards" . . . the body was, in some mysterious way, a perfect mirror of the world. . . . Sometimes I think the entire world is contained within each living person. . . . as if the underlying correspondences between tulips and lungs, veins and trees, flesh and earth, might reveal a pattern he could understand. . . . the intricate and exhausting task of trying to transform . . . the body into the world and the world into the body" (149, 201 - 02, 319).


from The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
by Paul Zindel"For one thing, the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds has made me curious about the sun and the stars, for the universe itself must be like a world of great atoms . . . but most important, I suppose my experiment has made me feel important--every atom in me, in everybody, has come from the sun--from places beyond our dreams. The atoms of our hands, the atoms of our hearts" (101-02).


A Blip on the Magnified
Computer Picture
On your way to the barbershop
you're almost blown off your feet
when it occurs to you that you're
using some of the very same time
needed to keep the galaxies
spinning through the light - years.

from the Collected Poems
of Ernest Sandeen