an elegant fortress from the tropical sun

distilled with care, by the African gods of Wallace

whose walls were not preserved in the minds of western society

and were then unscalable to the deities of darwin or galton

an ironic twist when a castle becomes a cell

held siege by iron, ivory, and impure linen

those shading walls did not cool the brave early fathers of medicine

and hid any subjects from their schools, sources and sclera

and hide any citizen from their oximeters, spirometers, and simple excisions

and receive their side effects, surgeries, and severed limbs