Prayer For The Circulatory System

Whose is this cathedral, aorta,
this sinewy carapace, empty fruit?

The hauled marble breaks slowly
from spine, tombstoning over lungs

hooked through with turnings
waving cilia like fields of kelp.

There are no places here, only
the constant on-and-off ramps

of blood vessels, capillary
walkways where leukocytes

mutter short prayers to pressure
and are washed away.

It is the cosmopolitan
self, where parasites

hawk their counterfeit proteins
between long lines of red cells

without a nucleus among them
but so much iron. The iamb

at the heart of it pulls, pushes,
forms syllables:

"How goodly are thy calories, body,
thy frantic life, O human."