Exchange

Then, when with much applause he lectured,
there sitting quietly at the back of the lecture-room,
a star whose light had not yet reached us,

she wondered, aware of her own young lungs, the capillary networks,
alveoli, the additions and divisions of the blood-oxygen exchange,

of the one who glided out following his beard—
the feeling to be filled
with the mystical moist night-air.

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From “Liner Notes” (2008)