The Heart Makers

Is there anything more abundant than the color green?

Scientists have turned spinach leaves

into beating, human heart tissue.

The leaves create a network

to transport blood;

the stem becomes an aorta

Man stacks leaves on leaves,

and sews veins into native arteries

to grow strong to the finich.

You see, if a picked leaf can be used to scaffold life

then perhaps pieces of wood may repair a bone.

The weather was dire during

the summer Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

Scientific developments and the possibility

of bringing a corpse back to life

kept her and her lover warm.

What would it take to galvanize a corpse?

Could you use a concoction of borrowed blood and bone

to ignite another form of life?

If you give something the means to beat,

will it throb with an earthly vitality?

Or will it fall flat like the land we often squander?

The idea of a heart so new and lavish fills me green with envy.

Is there anything more abundant than the color green?