Empty

Full of false hope,
I tilt my coffee cup, and look.

Empty.

Welcome, long afternoon.

BY CHANCE, OF COURSE

The following is a poem by Wendell Berry. I hold him in some of my highest respects, so I hope I am not infringing on his property rights by publishing this here. I am fascinated with the theory of the origin of species by natural selection in the struggle for life. My big problem is that the two arguing camps have not discussed whether or not the country pastor who is the father of this theory had any internal struggle between his faith and what he was seeing and discovering. I think he did not have such a personal struggle, especially because at the end of his publication he acknowledges the one who must have created all of this, in all of its unthinkable complexity and unthinkable connectedness. I hope that by the time Darwin's 300th birthday rolls around, it will be well understood that the argument has nothing to do with the integrity of God's Word or the integrity of the scientific process, but that they are both corroborated by one another. Happy 200th birthday, Sir Darwin.

BY CHANCE,
OF COURSE

WHILE ATTENDING THE ANNUAL CONVOCATION
OF CAUSE THEORISTS AND BIGBANGISTS AT THE
LOCAL PROVINCIAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY, THE
MAD FARMER INTERCEDES FROM THE BACK ROW

"Chance" is a poor word among
the mazes of causes and effects, the last
stand of these all-explainers who,
backed up to the first and final Why,
reply, "By chance, of course!" As if
that tied up ignorance with a ribbon.
In the beginning something by chance
existed that would bang and by chance
it banged, obedient to the by-chance
previously existing laws of existence
and banging, from which the rest proceeds
by logic of cause and effect also
previously existing by chance? Well,
when all that happened who was there?
Did the chance that made the bang then make
the Bomb, and there was no choice, no help?
Prove to me that chance did ever
make a sycamore tree, a yellow-
throated warbler nesting and singing
high up among the white limbs
and the golden leaf-light, and a man
to love the tree, the bird, the song
his life long, and by his love to save
them, so far, from all the machines.
By chance? Prove it, then, and I
by chance will kiss your ass.

Praise Song for the Day

by Elizabeth Alexander

A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.

I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.


Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Iffy

I’m not completely comfortable buying flowers
for my wife on the way home from work.
They came from Colombia, or Holland by plane.
Their nutrients came from Natural Gas,
not the soil right out front.