Belly button microbiome

It was poetry time again with Lizzie Elliott and her SeaWyld crew at the online Wyld Words meeting. The topic was bacteria.

Omphalos

Researchers from the Belly Button Biodiversity project, led by Jiri Hulcr from North Carolina State University, have revealed their first round of DNA results and reveal the discovery of some 1,400 strains of bacteria living inside volunteer’ belly buttons, and 662 of those are unrecognized strains. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-multiple-strains-bacteria-human-belly.html

The aroma was, to put it politely, piquant.

It was a piercing squeal of a smell:

a shot of ammonia; some angostura bitters;

and a low note of day old mackerel.

I thought everyone’s belly button

would be similarly screaming with scent.

But mine, it seems, was distinctive.

I shared it once.

Lover became ex lover.

I know not why.

But his belly button –

so he said –

was fragrant –

all cotton balls and talcum.

That was years ago.

I’ve not had the courage to mine my depths again.

Now, I ask – who’s there?

Seeded by my mother’s vagina;

enriched by lying on lawns,

experimental Lego bricks (the small ones)

and drips from summer lollies.

Then, sunscreen and sweat;

the proximity of men;

and the introduction of atmospheric visitors

from too often used towels

I bear my stinker print with pride.

It turns out that my father too has a malodorous omphalos. I asked him about it while massaging a painful knee. He face contorted in a grimace at the mere memory of the smell, which he couldn't describe except to say, "Awful!"

Hmmm. Interesting. Stinker print genes?

As I have driven to and from the hospital, I have repeatedly noticed Orion, a constellation I had never before paid any attention to. I wasn't even aware I could recognise it. I asked Dad about Orion and he said that at about the belly button point of the Hunter, you can see Andromeda.

There is something about this which... appeals to me. In this synchronicity.

In Greek mythology, she was the one chained to the rock to be eaten by a sea monster and saved by Perseus... he was the one who killed Medusa which gave rise to the birth of Pegasus.... Anyway. Andromeda is etymologically derived from the words that mean man (or human or husband) and to be mindful of (or to rule over or to outwit).

Andromeda, says dad, is the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way and is coming to get us.

So.... maybe I can think of this message as the stellar belly button readying itself to dominate human kind. Possibly through foul odours.