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.
Tag Archives: Sonnets
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.
Biodiversity
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.