Not Nothing

A map on tissue. A mass of wire. Electricity of the highest order.
Somewhere in this live tangle, scientists discovered—

like shipmates on the suddenly-round earth—
a new catalog of synaptic proteins

presenting how memory is laid down:
At the side of the transmitting neuron

an electrical signal arrives and releases chemical packets.

What I had imagined as “nothing” are a bunch of conversing
    squirts
remaking flat into intimate.

Copyright © 2015 by Kimiko Hahn. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 24, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.