Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems

Now, Where Was She?

21 Now, Where Was She? All curled up in an ergonomic chair, worried for her daughter, wondering if her mother sat down to wholesome whole grain at that delicate stage (in old photos , her mother wears dungarees rolled up, curls glamorous as a NoDak Dorothy whose basket filled with eggs, not Toto dogs, although truly there was no place like home) reading email articles forwarded by her sister the doctor: What happens in our DNA . . . stays in our DNA . . . No, if only that were true. Scientist says: What happens in our DNA is all curled up around things called histones. That curling up and turning of the DNA require folic acid. When that egg was created that made you, your grandmother’s diet was having some effect on how that DNA was folding and being methylated. And her little dog, too, curls and turns and folds, warming up to what has happened to grandmother’s prairie home histones. Italicized lines from Dr. Judith G. Hall, 2002 ...