means "study of life,"
if you look at its roots,
but Ron Rice, my lab partner in tenth grade,
just wanted to look at
his pot stash under the microscope.

He said he could see
the THC, but all I saw
were red strands roping
around hard green buds,
and crystals shining like dimes
on a sunlit tennis court.

People liked to call Ron "Rat."
He had a rat-tail in his hair
like the guys in Duran Duran.
He had a turned up nose that twitched
whenever he had an itch, and if
you put him under a microscope,

you'd have seen that
he would steal your jacket,
pawn it to buy coke,
and then help you look for it.
Our senior year, Ron OD'd and died
-suicide-

and everyone forgot
that they'd ever called  him "Rat."
They eulogized him and cried.
Man, if you were to look 
at one of those tears
under a microscope,

you'd see something human
dog-paddling and gasping its last,
and you'd see something inhuman,
holding it down, drowning it.