Elegant Worms and Feminist Poetry

Well, April is half over and it took posts by PalMD and GrrlScientist over at Science Blogs to remind me that we're in the middle of National Poetry Month (I am so ashamed). So, in honor of those cultured scientists, the first poem I will be posting for Poetry Month will feature C. elegans.

The poem below was penned by Doctor Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, the current poet laureate of Virgina and one of my personal heroes. Throughout her life, Doc has been not only an inspired poet and artist, but also a tremendous inspiration for young women searching for the confidence to explore their artistic voices and the world that surrounds them. Her most recent collection, River Country, includes this simultaneous poem:

Elegant Worms
Thousands of C. elegans aboard the shuttle Columbia as part of a science experiment survived the crash on February 1, 2003. These pinhead-size roundworms share many biological traits with humans.

The sky’s an estuary blue
Are we not like you?
when suddenly air sucks
Many-celled,
thousands of you
glowing,
through a bloom of particles.
sensual,
You spiral downward
sometimes slithery,
in a manmade coffin
gliding,
that catches flashes of fire,
we feed on
glints, metal bits
rot and decay,
tumbling toward chaos.
on earth.
All of you give birth
We illuminate,
before dying, something
brightening
to leave behind
ourselves,
come spring when we open
make
your silver-lined canister:
more of us:
each of you under a microscope
primitive,
smooth-skinned, cylindrical,
rough-hewn,
tapered, elegant
awake.
among rotting plants.
Hear distant bells?
You thrive, granting us
Honey-tongued,
wisdom in laboratories,
roots of lilies
crusty black pearls
call us
clinging to your shoulders
to loosen
while you tug and pull
red-bellied clay
at bruised vegetation.
in the hollow dark.
How did you manage
Blind,
the fall from grace?
we saved ourselves,
Did you curl into yourselves,
writhing
and in a freefall
micron by micron
imagine a snake’s charm
from the wheeling fall,
and twirl? Did you clip
recoiling,
pieces of shiny clouds to shape
shutting down
into parachutes?
into stasis,
Here in a Petri dish
dormant
that fills and empties
like death.
with suppositions,
We survived.
you—tiny miracles—
We—C. elegans—
carry pieces of roots
dreamed
on your backs which bear
lies,
like strong rope your plunge.
remained motionless
Undeterred, you stir from sleep
to stay alive.
and go on with your lives.

From: River Country (San Francisco Bay Press, 2008)
©Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda

Even though I've gotten a late start, I would like to continue to post good feminist poetry, or poetry by women, thorough out the rest of April. Anyone have any best-loved poems that they'd like to see posted?