The earth’s a complex, integrated whole,
each part entwining in a common waltz.
And in such systems backups have a goal—
“Enable full recovery from faults.”
When chestnuts died, the birds found other homes.
When pigeons died, raccoons found other eggs.
Extinction’s cold, destabilizing foams
cannot collapse a house with many legs.
But pavement is a desert, hard and dead;
suburban lawns are barren for a bear.
A farmer’s field will bring the wheat to head,
but other creatures only perish there.
We celebrate our tower growing tall,
but all the while we undermine its wall.
Yearly Archives: 2022
Dopamine
Their eyes—intently luminous—reflect
kaleidoscopes of pixelated light.
Frenetic echoes afterward project
on shuttered eyelids, sparking in the night.
With urgent fingers, frantically they clutch
and click controllers, keyboards, screens and mice,
the never-satisfying fruit of much
rehearsal, constant thought, and streamed advice.
Their voices burst in shouts of rage or joy
at new achievements, leaderboard defeats,
each loot box, headshot, killstreak, skin, or toy;
the feedback loop continually repeats.
Their wallets, grades, and spouses know the score:
“I think I’ve got the time to play one more.”
My Father’s Epitaph
My father was a complicated man.
A surgeon, pilot, seminary grad,
he used the opportunities he had
to overcome the life where he began.
(Depression-era broken home; my gran
divorced his cheating, alcoholic dad).
Conversion, war, then Harvard, marriage glad,
five children—much he did in short a span.
But middle-age provoked a darker turn.
He left his wife though teaching Sunday school
(his father’s lessons he forgot to learn),
for years wrought pain, lascivious and cruel.
But grace abounded; guilt began to burn,
till Twilight Mercy Found a Grateful Fool.
Maker’s Lament
His fingers led the quill’s familiar dance,
ensnaring thoughts in sinuous lines of ink,
unwitting in his ancient scribal trance
that Gutenberg so soon would break the link.
Her fingers passed the shuttle through the warp,
transmuting garb of sheep to that of kings,
accustomed to the music of her harp,
unwary of the song an engine sings.
Their fingers summoned visions from the mind,
with brush, and stencil, pen, and Photoshop,
illusionists astonished now to find
an artificial artist heist their crop.
Of all creation, humans are the head;
but what remains when human art is dead?
A Bedtime Prayer
God, the time to sleep has come for me at last;
this day, though blest, has been a weary one.
Both pain and gain I had beneath the sun,
and now I close with thanks for what has passed:
You gave me breath to walk, and work, and sing.
On wicked words and deeds, please, mercy show.
You gave me light to see, and know, and go.
I wanted more; I could have had much less.
You gave me hope, enduring in distress;
above all things it kept me fighting sin.
You gave me love—of beauty, kith, and kin,
delights enkindling love of You, my King.
So many were your perfect gifts as through the day I pressed.
With gratitude I gently go most sweetly to my rest.
A Morning Prayer
God, your brilliance lit each photon that has shined.
You wove spacetime. You framed the human mind.
Your might assembled every quantum mote,
and heaped up stars like sand, and formed my throat.
And though you’ve bound the universe with death,
today again you’ve filled my lungs with breath.
So speaking now, I kneel as I rise.
I place my hope in you. You hold my fate.
The Bible says you’re holy, loving, wise;
Muhammad says you’re merciful and great.
But me, I’ve never seen you with my eyes;
I only know to cling to hope and wait.
So lowly, weak, uncertain, full of sin,
I’ll worship, serve, and sing as if you’ll come again.