Transfiguration

In class, the students stare
as the Professor turns a quick circle
in the air, waving the wand like one flicks on
the light in a dark room. Her desk
grunts in frustration, waddling unhappily
on cloven feet, its massive frame, now
ungainly and filled with tiny holes,
the hair like a million minuscule trees
leaking out. From multi-planed
to multicellular.

There is a general
look of amazement
until she mentions
this is an art available
well-past their first year.
Someone scoffs
in disbelief. The professor
goes on, explaining
how they would not be turning furniture
into anything with snouts or whiskers,
amphibious gills, or even the most remote
resemblance of a spine. No.

Strict educational guidelines: For first-year students,
there are restrictions, rules, simplistic tests.
Controls and supervision abound. Only
small organisms, invertebrates.
Exoskeletons and six to eight legs for them.

She begins handing out buttons. Moans
of complaint issue around her. The air is heavy.
She throws back an apple. The desk
grunts, in appreciation this time. On her lips,
the faintest trace of a smile. She
goes on...

Atoms. Cells.
Brain tissue. Matter.
Coins. Dice.
Dualities versus
spectrums. She explains...

This world too is patterns. This world too
is opposites and elements opposing.
The things of matter are not always
the things of life. But what lives, in its entirety,
fits within matter. The kingdom, large as it is,
is still contained within the cosmic.

So too is its fragility, she mentions
as one clumsy boy squashes his button,
his wand now slick with internal juices
that were not there before, minutes ago
bundles of atoms bunched like beeswax
springing out in coils, developing legs
half-formed and the size of a thread, but

no less the miracle
ironed out by the heavy-handed inexperience
(and inattentiveness) of our young
miracle-maker, here.

“What a surprise,” she notes, “There will
be no second chances on your exams.”
Goes the didactic chastisement. She smiles
knowing the secret that will take them years to learn:
Everything, absolutely everything,
in spite of its unknowable movement,
is as girded in order, is as chained in patterns,
as the stars, waltzing to their silent music
dreaming the steps of their ancient dance.