Boil

by Alicia Ostriker

Boil over—it’s what the nerves do,

Watch them seethe when stimulated,

Murmurs the man at the stove

To the one at the fridge—

Watch that electric impulse that finally makes them

Fume and fizz at either

Frayed end. If you could grasp a bundle

Of nerves in your fist like a jumper cable, and sense that

Python’s writhe, or a garden hose when the pressure’s

High and it wilfully weaves about

Trying its best to get away from you—

You’d see how nothing is passive,

We’re all—I mean from our elephant sun, ejaculant

Great-grandfather, cascading down

To weightless

Unstoppable neutrinos

Leaving their silvery trace

In vacuum chambers, in

Effervescent lines, twisted

Madly in our madhouse jackets,

Rules, laws, which we are seething to break

Though to rupture them might be of course to die,

Or, possibly,

To change:

Boil, it’s what water

And everything else teaches.