One Lonely Molecule of H2O

In those huge, amorphous clouds out there,
Is there one H2O molecule,
That was once in my blood,
That once sloshed upon the deck
Of a sultan's cargo ship, weaving her way through the Indonesian Archipelago?
Was it once puffed out,
In the steamy breath of Genghis Khan's horse?--
Its origins going back to the dawn of earthly materials and physics as we know them?

Or was it formed in combustion, in 1945,
On a tragic, sad, horrifying day,
When the good ole US of A,
Proved her Atomic Might
In Nagasaki--
And will this hydrous basic unit of our ubiquitous yet precious substance
Be split apart in 10 years,
By a professor in a lab, in Chem. 101,
Demonstrating hydrolysis?

© Copyright 2001 Daniel E. Talkington

Previous

Next

Back to Index

home