POETRY-June 2010
Poem by Stuart Kestenbaum
Edited by Christopher Seid
Artwork by Betsy Thompson

“Open Window”

In the perfect cartoon world
the pie is placed to cool at the window,

the fragrance of apple and cinnamon
rising in the air, air that is all excited

molecules that spend their days
moving around the world, carbon

and oxygen molecules and if I’ve
got this right, we’re all

breathing the same oxygen
and in every twentieth breath

I’m inhaling the air that Columbus
took into his lungs. But it’s not just my cilia

and his cilia that have tickled the same
atoms, but also Moses, and Pablo Neruda,

and my grandmother and you as well.
In that way we are all one,

living, dying, re-forming, the apple
pie we steal from the window becoming us,

becoming earth, becoming tree
becoming fruit, becoming seed.

Look at the beautiful white blossoms
in the spring rain, traveling on the sweet air.