A child inherits features from its Ma
and Pa—appearance, weakness, talents, voice,
a plethora of details—not by choice,
but by the writing of genetic law.
Gametocytes contain a written text
which, sequenced in a 3-D alphabet,
describes the parents’ features. It’s reset,
and mixed, and carried to the next,
passing down the line a usable description.
Data heritance, the basis of relation,
stems directly from the act of gene transcription;
parentage is DNA communication,
sending cell-to-cell a physical inscription.
Reproduction copies written information.
First Premise
Darwinian selection operates
through time. A given organism vies
for finite mates and food until it dies,
its name erased unless it procreates.
But if it does, its genome iterates
again within its offspring as each tries
in turn to reproduce. Mutations rise
by chance; each winning one accumulates,
boosting fitness of the total population.
Cycles of repeated, random introduction
of selectable genetic information
by mutation (even boosted by induction)
can’t complete within a single generation.
Evolution presupposes reproduction.
At the Dawn of 2023
My sons (now seventeen and twenty) face
the precipice of manhood and career,
and I’m bewildered by the manic pace
of change, accelerating year by year.
My father’s father’s early days were like
his fathers’ from a thousand years before—
a horse, a wagon, sky, a singing shrike,
the edges had evolved, but not the core.
But now? The world I walk at middle-age
can’t fathom that of my own childhood,
and future-focused teens are forced to gauge
which non-existent living would be good.
A dad should help his children find their way,
but how, when future paths are nothing like today?
Bliss
When I was young, a tantalizing haze
of mystery hovered over foreign land.
No Google map or Wiki-on-demand
minute precision amplified my gaze.
A magazine bejeweled with Kodachrome
might testify of some exotic place,
but lacking tools condensing time and space,
imagination took me far from home.
What difference now. In lurid detail each
antipodean city street, hotel,
museum, restaurant, shop, and wishing well
(all with reviews!) is instantly in reach.
Much ignorance is certainly a curse,
but wonder is its blessing in reverse.
Midway
Enduring wings absorb unending miles,
gliding, turning, husbanding the breeze,
efficient mother canvassing the seas,
patrolling, patient near secluded isles.
Persistence pays. She plunges toward the waves,
rewarded by a sparkle from the air,
a welcome sign of aromatic fare,
the seaborne nourishment her fledgling craves.
But unadapted instincts misconstrued.
Once fruitful soil is salted now with stones.
She carries in her pack deceptive food
that never quiets ever-hungry moans;
and so regurgitating plastic to her brood,
she gets a charnel house of bottle caps and bones.
Blackrock
A mountain dominates those shattered planes,
its ashen rampart looming, looking down,
the searing summit where a Dragon reigns,
his brow encircled with a flaming crown.
Within the mountain’s heart a secret hoard,
in dwarven halls of shadowed flame and forge,
while deeper still a mighty Firelord
lies sleeping, guarded in a molten gorge.
For eons in that place a spirit dwelt
whose hidden, natural form was never seen—
a middle-aged adult with bulging belt,
intently staring at a glaring screen.
And many days cascaded through his hands,
scrabbling after fame in simulated lands.
After Dinner
Our taxi lingered, idle at the light,
slight droplets coalescing misty rain.
Her sudden taps insistent at the pane,
grabbed my attention outward to the night.
Balloons she offered, festive, out of place.
Survival hounded. Desperation egged.
Necessity demanded. Courage begged.
And ticking seconds on the driver’s face.
Her sari hid the baby in her arms
in colored cotton clinging limp and damp.
Unseen to me, another roadside camp,
or nightly fears, or daylight’s unknown harms.
The taxi surged; the seller slipped behind,
still tapping at the windows of my mind.
Saipan
In 1999 I traveled there,
a newly-minted man of twenty-one,
10,000 miles ferried through the air,
to sudden rains, humidity, and sun.
The endless blueness of the ocean view,
the sheerness of the cliffs above the sea,
the flaming blossoms that I found with you
are images that still return to me.
2004 we finally flew away;
we left behind the geckos and the sand.
But, oh, much richer than my landing day,
I carried love, a son, a wedding band.
How little I expected when I flew,
that I would find my paradise in you.
Doomscroll
My auntie texted me today,
“Is <app redacted> on your phone?
The news declares it should be gone!”
She wondered what I had to say.
I offered her a metaphor:
“Imagine time is gasoline,
the <app> a wood chipping machine,
and every brain a two-by-four.”
“You start to click; it starts to roar.
The fuel needle leftward rolls;
your mental lumber scrolls and scrolls.
You’re left with sawdust on the floor.”
Now <censored>, it will never last.
Like other fads, it too shall pass.
But by observing let’s amass
of tasty truth a fine repast:
Technology is just a tool.
A stone, a wheel, a clock, an app,
they’re pen and ink; they’re not the map.
A fool with tool is still a fool.
Dear reader, if you would be wise,
above all treasure, guard your heart;
for wisdom is an inward art
that best rewards selective eyes.
Bridgework
Words are the bricks and mortar of the mind;
pictures alone bear insufficient weight.
“Message” demands a bridge more strongly lined,
passing from brain to brain our human freight.
Wagons of thought traverse these worded roads,
linking through space and time our separate heads,
making from widely spread synaptic nodes
a single mental net of verbal threads.
Mathematics traced our footsteps to the moon,
but Johnson didn’t calculate alone.
The brains that steered the astronaut platoon
amongst them counted Archimedes’ own.
Since words convey between us all we know,
how great that art that shapes them as they go.