In the Stem Cell Lab

I want to grow the tiny things in petrie dishes,
wear a white coat with large clear buttons,
spend all day with my eye to the microscope,
watching cells stretch, flatten, connect,
bundle, grow into what I hope, and don't.
When I was a child, I thought culturing
cells was like cooking popcorn and for that matter
popcorn could expand on and on into the sky--
like cells, if fed and watched tell they're plump and beating.
But this little dish, no bigger than a tin of mints,
is making something one might make a new life from.