 | The Sunday Poem: Life & LoveMay 20th, 2007 |
Life is not sacred. It is precious.
There is a difference: the world
Cheerfully slaughters the innocent,
The accidental, the promising.
Each blade of grass is life;
Each microbe on a grain of sand.
Each blastocyst, each parasite,
Each recombinant acid bit.
Each set of neurons firing,
Each varied, vertiginous
Set of senses, inchoate reactions,
Pathways burned through myelin.
Thin-veined leaves uncurling spring,
Each water-cupping hydrozoa,
Human fingers questing for a touch –
Not special. Just marvelous.
Mourning, we mourn the instance.
Not webs of cells, mitochondriae,
The symbiotes that link
The web of life from us to them.
We mourn instead intangibles:
The days not gone by, completing
Each other’s thoughts, the dance
Of neurons mirroring.
These are intentions, not blind
Questing, not propagation
Creeping its way across the blank.
These are bounds beyond biology.
There is a difference: the world
Knows life as tumbles of succession,
Accidental promising. But love – ah,
Love is not precious. It is sacred.
- May 20th, 2007
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