Reflection

This poem is part of a sequence of poems that responds/thematically feeds off of parts of a quote from an organic chemistry book; in this case, the quote is “Considering the structural diversity of natural products, the structures of DNA and RNA are simple. All their components, called nucleotides, are polyfunctional, and it is one of the wonders of nature that evolution has eliminated all but a few specific combinations.” I was thinking of the pattern of the phrase “male pattern [hair]loss” when I wrote the first line, wanting to convey consumable substance. The Hollies’ “Bus Stop” asks “please share my umbrella”; I wanted to further from “Ale” to another alcoholic drink variety. I hope for “Lass, lad, lax” to feel like it includes a nonbinary version of these terms. I enjoy how an anagram of “hypernym” would be “nymph.” I hope for the final line to bring to mind “woulds” and “woods.”