Frontiers and Membranes

The river meets the bank –
      the garbage,
      the old bricks on the beach
      the dead fish

Discarded signs of life
      washed up
      in a useless
      forgotten place

Nobody knows,
      Nobody cares,
            Nobody goes there,
                  down where the
                  bushes are scratchy,
                  down among
                  the poison ivy
                  where the aluminum can
                  and broken Styrofoam chunks
                        are resting

And what about the bugs
      we don’t even know exist?
What about the bacteria
      that live in colonies
      on our skin?
What about maggots and dung beetles?

Their whole existence is on the
      edge of another life,
      between the lines of someone else’s
            plans

The things we were done with
      the places we couldn’t use


-Jim DuBois
Oct 1, 1998