Whether we are the products of chance or design has and will continue to occupy minds far greater than mine for as long as we exist. My own opinions on the topic have changed enough with time and circumstance as to have proven wholly unreliable.

We are each born into a readymade world. We burst screaming into huts, hospitals, or homes clutching invisible little membership cards into our own particular society. We grow, find our place, then fall like all that came before us. Even the rebel has a role as established as that of the doctor, or politician. The rhythms change, the dance continues, the world goes round.

I get it, I really do. We don’t know a damn thing. We function and we’re good at it. We are the blind cells of a hidden body. The happiest among us, work, fuck, fight and die never wondering at such things.

We created religion and the sciences for those who crave more. Each with their own priesthoods and zealotry, saving something more digestible on the side for the masses who, on occasion, are plagued by pangs of wonder and doubt.

Each camp casts barbs. To blame Christianity for the Crusades is the equivalent blaming science for the Bomb. I suspect that the truth, and I have faith that there is one, is some cosmic marriage of both.

We simply don’t know. And that’s my point. Why can’t we just accept our ignorance and keep looking?

My mother
Foresaw deaths
And walked among
Chrysanthemums,
Winecolored,
Withe red rose,
The earthy blossoms.

My very breath
Disowned
In nights of study,
And page by page
I came on spring.

The rats run on the roof,
These words come hard—
Sadder than cockcrow
In a dreamless, earthen sleep.
The Christ, eternal
In the scented cold; my love,
Her hand on the sill
White, as if out of earth;
And spring, the sleep of the dead.