Walking under the wrought iron
archway to the amphitheater
with its hard Methodist benches,
a dark durable wood
that had absorbed so many songs,
I paused and thought of Daddy
who had missed so much living,
sorry for the irretrievable loss of it.
I could picture so much life here,
bodies packed tight in the pews,
blue-backed hymnals, voices
raised loud and pure. A fellowship
of believers. Now only ghosts
remain. How he would
have loved it. Grief anew.
Imagine a shallow pool that never existed – it couldn’t have
A place like this has never existed on earth, but if it did…..
It would contain around 500 compounds we call amino acids
and they can be mirrored, so this would be 1000
But we’re just concerned with just 4, A, C, T and G and they all must be left-handed
Here is a left-handed T molecule – it must be joined with a left-handed G
via a complex lattice of sugar and phosphate
Must be
but all can connect, all the other 499 lefts and 500 rights
1 chance in 1000 that LH-T hooks up with LH-G
and we have a DNA base pair
For the 2nd base pair, we need and left-handed T, G, A or C – 4 chances in 1000
which will then hook to it’s required mate – 1 chance in 1000
To get two base pairs – 1 chance in 250,000,000
You just won the national lottery
A 3rd base pair? 1 chance in 62.5 trillion
The simplest organism on earth? 490,885 base pairs (we have a little over 3 billion)
And the answer becomes obvious
DNA is an artifact, a tool
Intelligently created
Happy Sostice,
everyone.
I hope your day
is full of fun.
If it’s not
don’t be sad,
take a walk
release the bad.
Send that poison
straight to hell.
Then you’ll feel
refreshed and well.
Summer Solstice
is the longest day.
May it’s sunshine
bring happiness your way.
The
gro-
cer-
y
list
was
cow-
er-
ing
in
the
cor-
ner
and
could
not
pro-
gress–
but
the
bul-
let
points
kept
com-
ing,
nev-
er-
the-
less.
Marley didn’t have plans for children herself
but she agreed to watch the baby
when it was “Time For An Evening Out.”
We saw a movie. I think it was about a mother
trying to text the friend watching the baby and
the father saying try to enjoy yourself, he’s fine.
When we got home after the movie, the baby was
in his bouncer while Marley, half-asleep, rocked him
with her arm hanging down the side of the futon.
He was little – only a month older than
the kitten that came to live here last night,
the smallest and first indoor animal we’ve had.
I thought of her last night when the kitten woke,
meowing, with no mother to comfort him.
I thought of Mavis, up at the neighbor’s,
wondered how she was feeling, wondered
what she would want me to do to help her baby.
So I put my head beside him on the blanket
and snuggled the soft gray fluff around him.
I smoothed his fur over and over, whispering comfort
the best I could, while he purred himself to sleep.
Is living the same as dying
only in slow motion?
Like sleepwalking
where the nurse takes your pulse
and looks right through you?
Time passes like the last drop of water
clings to the faucet,
as if suspended in resin,
then falls as loud as thunder
of the approaching storm.
Like dream-walking between the tendrils
that hold us together,
our fingertips just out of reach,
then high dive from the end of the balance beam,
like baby gymnasts, double-jointed,
bending without pain.
Beauty, grace,
a perfect landing.
I walk a tightrope life
my balancing pole see-sawing
under weight of microplastics, wild
fires, melting icecaps. I try
to counterbalance by thumbing
the scale with little things—
carrying change for egg
customers, ordering library
books for pickup next week
at storytime, shooing turkeys
from corn patch. I’m told
I make the trivial weightier
than need be, but if I didn’t
how quickly I’d tip and fall.
Our house, 1876 vintage, sits outside
a village named for a Persian city
talked about in Revelations as a place
where things started were not finished,
place of image, not substance; in our house
I clunk through drawers of junk
like a dry drunk looking for a hidden bottle
of Old Grandad with a few drops
of ambrosia in the bottom, but in our house
junk’s not confined to drawers,
it tumbles out of closets, falls off
bookshelves, lurks under the couch,
sleeps under sheets of unmade beds;
don’t get me wrong, we’re not hoarders,
not boarders of the unnecessary,
we’re middlle-of-the-road collectors,
accumulating a cache of locks & bones
& bells & stones & stamps & maps
that whisper to us about the space & time
we’ve occupied here. Oh dear, pundits
tell us to grab two keepsakes to hold
in the coming catastrophe. Two?
just two to save, two things on my person
when the comet strikes and we’re blown
to smithereens? Still I try and so glide
past a table stacked with folders of odd lines
of verse, then ascend the stairs to God
knows where…oh, it’s my old workout room
and it’s forgotten view of the garden;
amidst the stationary bike, Nordic flexor,
dumbbells. isometric exerciser bars, there’s
the double chest of drawers, full of clothes
I swear I’ll someday fit into again;
I believe my beloved objects are in the top left,
so I rummage through, desperately throwing
aside my Artic cool shirts made in Vietnam
with ZE*X technology and my pants,
Hydrofreeze capable in case I’m ever stuck
in Antartica…alas, I can’t find my two precious icons
…they must be here…My God, now CNN says
we have 45 minutes before the big bang.
Good Lord! Where could they be? Suddenly
I feel their invisible tug; sweating and panting
I tear open the bottom drawer on the right,
it’s full of a half dozen jeans with authentic
knee holes gaining value which I heave out
onto the floor and thank God there they are,
my two darling objects sitting calmly
all these years, 19 to be exact: my retirement
watch, gold with gold chain, without hands,
given by the apostle Paul, the one from the bible,
who had visited Sardiz to preach about getting
things done…and here’s the other item of veneration,
my wedding ring, from both marriages, hidden
quietly, without display or fame, without expectation.
only the circle of continuation
When its alarm starts blaring I throw my android
out the window. I’m aware of breathing,
of standing in our antique house with everything
my long line of double helix has brought me,
I smile and descend the stairway to the kitchen
There you are…roasting tomatoes & frying apples
