THEME 3: Poetry

*(Presently under revision. Sorry for the delay in complete population of poetry.)

THOUGHTS CONCEIVED

How high can the condor rise with only its outstretched wings?
How inspired are the solitaire’s notes in the beautiful call it sings?
How moving the practiced words mimicked by an African grey?
How remorseful the golden eagle as it plummets toward its prey?

How thankful is the dolphin, as it twists and turns and leaps?
How grateful is the orca, while appointed rounds it keeps?
How mournful is myxini in the darkness of the sea?
How uplifted is an anabas, perched high in a forest’s tree?

When a grizzly suckles her cubs, is there more than hardwired care?
When the tigress forgoes bearing, while her young are still in her lair?
When death claims one of the family, do elephants truly grieve?
When behaviours seem beyond instinct, are thoughts without language conceived?

When an infant first touches its mother, do thoughts really travel two ways? Must language be part of the process when regret first precedes delay? Is there any other creature who a single question could frame?Any other reasoning mind a commensurate response could claim?

O human so tiny and sudden in the vastness of space and time. Only creature of known intersection where question and response combine. Powered flight, written music, printed text, themed fine art, complex math: these your wings, But without love, O wasteful Icarus – pit canary that barely sings.

Surely love is the source of your being: without love, you will fall from your sky. Surely love is your purpose for living: without loving, you will wither and die. Surely love is a precious gift given; not invented nor a cast of the die. Surely love should be, precious creature, your existential reply.

Jim Davis

KING OR SERVANT

Before our world existed, a love was meant to be.
Before our star’s bright burning, the colours of the sea.
Before the sweep of ocean waves, wild winds would have to blow.
And bending masses coalesce to check their ebb and flow.
And heavens’ bright celestial spinnings were just a blink in time,
And these – before a single cell – first had to all align.

More rare than gold or uncut stones – mere forgings of the Earth.
Gleamed the highest mystery: why a human birth?
A complex symphony of life played out in time and space.
And – aeons old – against all odds, each strand a closer trace.
Refining lines of twisted threads, woven out and in,
With yet no hint of wonderment, of happiness, or sin.

Then one quiet moonlit night, that glance up to the sky…
First glint of self-awareness in a raised bipedid’s eye…
Alone, yet just as vulnerable as all life spun before.
Great march of myriad creatures through life’s revolving door .
From all the countless lineages lost in death’s decay.
To all the telling patterns transposed in ancient clay.

Crescendo of that moment: not “How?” but rather “WHY”?
Beyond the call of instinct, a language to reply.
Perhaps some other intelligence clicks in oceans deep.
Or howls or caws in unison beyond true instinct’s creep.
Alone, that glance would rise above all other minds’ discourse,
To question why to live and die beyond just brutish force.

To live to live! To die to die! What other creature’s choice?
“To die to live”! “To live to die”! What other creature’s voice?
To rule as king, or servant be – which the greater part?
To serve, as king, the Golden Rule hearkens to the start!
Before our world existed, a love was meant to be.
Before our star’s bright burning, the colours of the sea.

Jim Davis 2022

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