Religion for the Lonely

Imagine,
primordial soup.

Elements
in the early
atmosphere
allied in the spirit

of nucleotides,
becoming chains
of potential,
which rained down
from heaven
upon the desert sea

like the seeds
they would beget,
along with lungfish,
cockroach, and spleens.

But in the beginning
was only acid
learning
to re-imagine itself,
to remember,
to distill

life, and then stronger
life, and finally
order.

What a revelation,
the membrane, creator
of internal worlds.

Infinitesimal
sanctuaries
realized the first
individual
gifts--molecules
to strengthen
and to commune.

The joining
of worlds, inevitable.

Here a tail,
there a hook,
and a mere billion
years later
acid was algae.

And algae learned
to exhale
oxygen, invented
sex and thrived
on its own breath--

turned verdant
and rooted to stone.

Diaphanous
animal forms gathered
exuberance into fins,
shells and spines.

On land, over-teeming
green and the first
creaturely ventures
against gravity endured
catastrophe
upon catastrophe,

exalting only the strong.
And perishing
gave rise to eloquence.

Shimmering scales,
gracious bloom,
and mammalian warmth.

Imagine,
a suckling babe.

And imagine
forgetting all of this,
the very legacy

of the cells in my old friend's
wrist where he so blithely
drew a razor,

not intending to die,
just hoping to prove he was
not already dead.

He and I do not speak
anymore, not least
because the mind fails
to comprehend
its own grandeur.

But at Christmas
I thought of him
when I peeled back
gold foil from a small world
sealed in glass.

Within, fairy shrimp
feasted on algae
in a sun-fueled Eden,
which I placed
on my desk, a reminder
that we are at least
as marvelous as that.

The last time I saw
my friend
was the funeral
of another young man
who had a problem
with forgetting,
and a shotgun--

such a crude tool
to end the work of eons
that have already borne
innumerable endings.

Yet I have a paper
packet of cosmo seeds
in my pocket, the beginnings
of a trillionth miracle.

And I still dare to want
for love.  We yearn
for what we are beneath
our blunt object egos.

Consider the lilies,
salamanders,
and grazing ewes.
Offer thanks
to who will listen,

personage in the sky
or child on the corner.
We are progeny
of an exploding heaven.
Forged in the roiling
waters of a jeweled orb.

Let us rejoice.