Not only do organisms make their nests
Within organisms. Not only do ecosystems
Nest within ecosystems. Whole kinds
Of ecosystems, systems of ecosystems nest
Within others. All of life, from, if not viruses,
Which may escape the definition, at least
Bacteria to oceanic systems of exchange,
The whole trophic cascade, serves as a host
Manipulated by the not-quite-living parasite
Of artifice, itself a vast system of behaviors
In many ways echoing the systems of life,
With its predators and prey, its furtive mice
Stealing crumbs from the pantries of the gods,
Its own parasites locked in population cycles
With its own hosts of seraphim and ghosts.
The swimmer traveling through the desert,
Found a cheap motel, the kind that once
Were new mushrooms springing up from
The droppings of the sudden car culture, now
Barely alive, their spores shed decades ago.
This one had a broken sign and a kind,
Anxious immigrant from India named Paul
(Come on, guess which part of India
That name suggests. Do you know?), who
Accepted cash and offered bottled water
From the mini-fridge in the motel office
That his wife had partitioned with curtains
To make a home. The heat outside insisted
Humans were not especially welcome, but
The room that smelled of a half-century or
More of cigarette smoke in the drapes
Nonetheless had a serviceable television,
A desperately wheezy air-conditioner, a tap
From which water sprang miraculously,
Electricity, lights, a shower head, a flush toilet,
Wifi, and a mini-fridge of its own. The dehydrated
Swimmer knew from all this that, despite the heat,
Despite the way the stars emerged as if, yes,
They were always there, those distant fires
Of this smoky sky, the way the broken sign
Drooped without regard for its fading
Significance, the ancients were correct
To boast of human triumphs over nature,
Even if the triumph itself had become leviathan
And even if, in this broiling desert, humans
Served only as hosts within their greater host.
All night he floated in the belly of the beast.
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