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I step out of my lab
Into the autumn night,
The earth lies peacefully
Under a blanket of mist.Streetlights gaze listlessly
At the empty campus street,
The mulch of wet leaves
Clings to the footpath.The soft hum of machinery
Receeds in the distance,
As my footsteps hasten
To home, dinner and sleep.While behind those double doors,
Impervious to night or season,
Cells crawl along culture dishes,
Gels hiss, freezers shudder, shakers rock.
Mitul Sarkar is currently a student in the Neuroscience Ph.D. program at the University of Iowa. Earlier, he worked as a physician in India until a combination of scientific curiosity, exploratory behavior and plain luck brought him to the U.S. His interests include poetry, photography, the Internet and when possible, cooking.
Julia Kuhl has done illustrations for the New Yorker and the New York Times, among others. She now lives in Heidelberg, Germany, with her neurobiologist husband and is working on a comic book - a Fulika atra (coot) version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
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