erythros

So much blood has spilled...so much deep

red warm thick blood has seeped through

skin and delicate veins and has coalesced

in pools on floors   in forests   on hands -

touched tongues with taste of cold metal.

Iron forged in bellies of distant stars, dynamic

cosmic ovens, swims in the hemoglobin

of each human being, membrane body.

erythros: red.
kytos: hollow.

Only less than 200 years ago did we peer

closely enough to see the individual 

biconcave discs with no nucleus, a hollow

center, and scarlet miasma searing through.

Each second, 2.4 million new blood cells

are birthed in you. 60 million died
in the second world war and in Rwanda, 800,000

in only 100 days. No one knows how

many were killed in the Crusades, or

for countless unimaginable reasons.

20-30 trillion corpuscles navigate the thin

channels that traverse organs and tissue in

the field of your body. They carry the exhale

of trees to each part; they speed so that

each minute the cells cover the meandering

path three times. Tiny membrane-bodies that

coagulate into miniature rivers and streams ripple

and teem with your Life, are journeying those

halls of your mysteriously confined figure.

We forget that we bleed the same color, that

erythros-red is what we all are on the inside,

and that each cell is hollow at the center,

save for that mesmerizing sphere of light

that glows on every level, in each smaller

piece that comes together to form something

greater.