It’s clouding up in the heavens, he said, wrinkling his brow,
craning his neck. A friend from biochem.
That one short sentence hauls his face and name
through time.

Dirty water after a bath. The child calls it
Transmoocent! And then forgets.
Long after that moment has swirled down the drain,
the word suddenly returns.

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Just as you hear again years later
the old (to you, then) geography teacher:
because of tectonic shifts, boys and girls,
the Appalachian beauts formed.

And there she stands again, petite, at the blackboard.
The shadow of the child splashes transmoocent water.
It’s getting dark. The heavens are clouding up
above the beautiful masses of buttes.