A Cross in the Sky

A Cross in the Sky 

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Skeleton of an acacia tree, QC

I have lost you forever,

now a silhouette in the sky,

spreading a gospel to remember

for the mindless passerby.

You lived half of your life,

yet fullest at the Throne;

earning it well with strife, 

where every seed is grown.

The birds now a flock, 

the child a man; 

you bid them all the luck,

and now you are gone.

In youth you sheltered me,

a thought I can't be free,

I atone for your brevity, 

with a thousand-and-one tree.~

Mutation Gone Wild Through Genetic Engineering

Mutation Gone Wild Through Genetic Engineering

Glass paintings and Poem by Dr Abe V Rotor

 Crustacean mutants

 Turkey fish Siamese twin

Deformed Groupers

                                Evolution through fusion: Sargassum fish 

Who is your father, who is your mother?
your sister, your brother?
You look like no one; 
where did you come from?

Who is your guardian, who is your maker?
your ancestor, your kin?
You look like alien; 
where did you come from?

Who is your friend, who is your neighbor?
your mate, your children?
You are an outcast; 
where did you come from?

Why do you have blood other than your own?
Tissue and cells enlarged?
chromosomes paired, unpaired
DNA snipped, spliced? 

Why do you have to be a giant among the small?
Or Lilliputian to be smart?
shaped like barrel or grass,
armed with less or more?

Why do you have to eat more than you should?
ravage all - big and small
to grow too large heeding not
the fate of the dinosaur?

Why do you have to veer away from your origin?
evade the dictates of nature?
live like vagabond 
sans company, sans home?
What good is science destined to nowhere?
 thriving on trial and error?
and having no control 
of good and evil? 

What good  is science sans conscience clear?
though genius its master
at the border of insanity
for fame and glory? 

What good is science that creates a Frankenstein
monster deprived of love,
home and family, 
rebel against humanity?

What good is science that destroys what it builds?  
like mad destroying the Pieta
for not seeing true beauty
in  simplicity and piety?

x x x 

* Spontaneous thoughts of the author while painting 

these images of an unnatural world.  

A HEART ON THE WALL

A HEART ON THE WALL

Dr Abe V Rotor

Painting in acrylic (16.5" x 18")

Oh, heart on the wall

     do you still feel?

Do you still throb -

     the throb of love?

Ivy, ivy on the wall,

     don't hide 

     a living heart.

Time stands still on a weekend

Painting and Verse by Dr Abe V Rotor 

Kids Fishing in acrylic by AVRotor 23015

Time stands still on a weekend

far away from school. 

when fish return to spawn 

and the stream full. 

Seven doves above alight

on a tree top

to watch the kids at play

and hear them laugh.

Peace they bring to where

innocence reigns.

far from the war zone

tears and pains. 

Where nature is true and kind, 

sans doubts and fears;

Patience, patience -  the fish bites

in a thousand cheers. ~ 

Resurrection and Regeneration

Resurrection and Regeneration 

Dr Abe V Rotor

.

              Old folks tell us of the magic of lizards growing new tails, crabs regaining lost claws, starfish arising from body pieces. How can we explain these mysteries?

House lizard or butiki, emerges from hiding after shedding off its skin (molting). 

The biological phenomenon behind these stories is called regeneration. The male deer grows a new set of anthers each year; sea squirts and hydras are produced from tiny buds; the same way plants grow from cuttings. New worms may regenerate from just pieces of the body; and some fish can sprout new fins to replace the ones that have been bitten off.

Experiments demonstrated that the forelimb of a salamander severed midway between the elbow and the wrist, can actually grow into a new one exactly the same as the lost parts. The stump re-forms the missing forelimb, wrist, and digits within a few months. In biology this is called redifferentiation, which means that the new tissues are capable of reproducing the actual structure and attendant function of the original tissues.

Curious the kid I was, I examined a twitching piece of tail, without any trace of its owner. I was puzzled at what I saw. My father explained how the lizard, a skink or bubuli, escaped its would-be predator by leaving its tail twitching to attract its enemy, while its tailless body stealthily went into hiding. “It will grow a new tail,” father assured me. I have also witnessed tailless house lizards (butiki) growing back their tails at various stages, feeding on insects around a ceiling lamp. During the regeneration period these house lizards were not as agile as those with normal tails, which led me to conclude how important the tail is.

Regeneration is a survival mechanism of many organisms. Even if you have successfully subdued a live crab you might end up holding only its pincers  and the canny creature has gone back in the water. This is true also to grasshoppers, they actually detach their legs in order to escape their enemies.

Another kind of regeneration is compensatory hypertrophy, a kind of temporary growth response that occurs in such organs as the liver and kidney when they are damaged. If a surgeon removes up to 70 percent of a diseased liver, the remaining liver tissues undergo rapid mitosis (multiplication of cells) until almost the original liver mass is restored. Similarly, if one kidney is removed, the other enlarges greatly to compensate for its lost partner. ~