His Nose Always in a Book
By Oliver Rice

     All life is sorted into some
thirty three body plans, or phyla.


A small soft purposeful self
of the order Psocoptera,
he is at the University,
although it might have been the morgue of the Times,

given the stimuli that trigger his neurocircuits,

pale gray-brown and wingless,
with a round mobile head and compound eyes,
is in natural history,
although it might have been semantics or psychology,

being untroubled by the absurdities
nor any odor of demons,

who, since early in September,
his antennae almost as long as his body,
has absorbed nearly half an inch
of his vital idea,

invested with the moral clarity of the food chain,

who, although it might have been killdeer to kiwi,
has pursued his chewing parts
from Linnaeus to Liposcelis divinatorius
his very own binomial,

true to the mutations of his forefathers
and his hierarchy of needs,

who, although he might bore on
into eternal night, not to keep God waiting,
does at interludes like this obey the commandments
to repose, to metabolize, perhaps to propagate,

and meditate upon survival.

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