Theo-Logic

No mortal understands
How one Deity commands
Fertile seeds and barren sands;

The soothing breeze, the chafing gale;
Timid rains and brazen hail;
Air high and rare, and low and stale;

Water and fire;
Resentment and romance;
Indifference and desire;
Destiny and chance.

Virile lads and nubile maids—
Cancer, leprosy, and AIDS…
Life rises, crests, and then cascades.

Can it be, for heavens' sakes,
For lambs' and tygers', doves' and snakes';
That only one Creator makes
Such miracles and such mistakes.

And I scarcely can conceive
How good and evil forces cleave
To just one God; yet I believe.

And yet, sometimes I wonder…
All of our religions
Claim success, but who can tell?
Are those really visions
Or illusions that they sell?

And if the meek will have the earth,
And the last shall be the first,
What will faithfulness be worth,
Once the roles have been reversed?

When the kings are made to bow,
And the slaves are all set free,
And the holier-than-thou
Turn out lowlier-than-thee,

Will all of our religions
Answer the same knell,
As their divided missions
Wend their varied ways to Hell?

When the last shall be the first,
And the wealthy have the least,
Will the blessed be the cursed?
Will the doubter be the priest?

The faithful all pursue God—
They're assured that He exists,
But suppose the only true God
Is the God of atheists…

As the Bulls Run

If we had waited another day
or another moment,
there would have been a different child born.
The egg would have been the same.
But the race of the sperm would doubtless have crowned
a different champion. The sperm run
is chaotic. It is
a shuffling of the deck, a chance
for chance to reset itself.
There is sufficient Brownian motion involved
that victory does not necessarily go to the fleetest.
Life begins always with an element of capriciousness
that characterizes it throughout.
Were life predictable
it would not be worth its own while.

Life is full for being full of choices,
conscious and unconscious,
whose outcomes cannot be clearly foreseen…
small choices
that make great unknowable differences,
choices made with scarcely a thought,
like waiting another day
or another moment.