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