Evolution, Devil, Transgression
Evolution
Evolution hails invention and progress!
Promising opportunities permits entrepreneurs
to raise their stakes. When they do, they fall
into heinous pits, where justification for division,
of hunter and prey, of rich and poor, based on
survival of the fittest, injects old poison into
new hope. Engines of power invest in progress.
Because change, fast in imagination, is slowed
by genetics, it is being marshaled by machines.
Can the animating soul evolve to that fast step
or like an old dancer, must it falter? Can a dancer
elevate out of ignorance before the core de ballet
of isolated egos bathed in ignorance of wholeness
twirl towards Eden to be reborn?
Devil
Should we meet the Devil, though He is dark,
we will not turn Him back
with words of power, or dazzle Him with light,
for then, being blinded,
He might blunder through shadows cast
as we hold our lamps aloft.
Better we be strong as spring, sprung of joy,
rhubarb as legs, purple sprouting as hair,
apple blossom as eyes.
Better we be fast as mountain water and as pure,
with songs and laughter.
When the Devil is triumphant and strong
feverish rhythms
pound in His arteries. Entire pharmacopoeias
are penned in His blood.
Get that and we’ve got
worlds in our palms, large as marrow leaves,
long as celery and chives.
You know, the Devil can enjoy a feast as well
as you and we.
He twinkles with blossoms in His eyes
to have us for a fool.
He’s God and through our fear
we created a monster when
we separated Him from wholeness.
Transgression
After autumn’s fall, bare trees are
bashful as adolescents. Tramped
by busy feet, leaves rot to brown.
Informed by war, my family ate frugally,
turned memories, kept expectations down.
The adolescent I had been, lackluster
as a sack of potatoes, notched in
his belt and took the world by storm.
Longing igniting action, compelled me to play
a part on this stage that belongs to no one.
Clouds extend to horizons where land
runs out. Fervent imagination, itinerant
agent of change, widens views and reach.
Rainbows quicken reverence as unbridled
desire, a harlequin no longer in hiding,
penetrates ocean’s veil.
In days of reckoning, unchecked actions
are accounted for!
Cumuli, grey, blue/black and brilliant,
are turbulent with hail.
The herd is under the oaks.
Grief, hollowed and empty of rhetoric,
as after the death of a child in the afternoon,
is acrid as smoke. Hope, precarious
on cliff’s edge, prances unsteadily.
Giants heave stones, covert hands
push up bones, gaping jowls exhale breath,
foul with regret; my verdict as yet, undecided.
By Misha Norland