Poems

Crown of Creation

They say we’re the crown of creation,

the pinnacle of the evolutionary tree.

Masters of the world,

everything exists for our benefit.

But I don’t buy it – that’s not the way it is.

We engage in abstract thought,

record our history, imagine the future,

tell stories and write books, make art and music,

measure the stars and discover quarks and bosons,

send spacecraft to the outer solar system and beyond.

Other animals can’t do those things,

though they have their own languages –

some more sophisticated

than ours in subtle ways we can’t imagine.

We may be the highest branch on the tree,

but without the tree we wouldn’t exist.

We need the trunk

and all the branches that led to our species,

plus the current branches

that make up an ecosystem we can’t exist without.

Invention is a phenomenon of all life and I’m here

only due to the creations of bacteria

who sowed the seeds of the tree

two and three billion years ago and more

and those who’ve carried the torch since then.

I came from them and it’s the genius

of animals and plants down to the simplest original bacteria

whose shoulders I stand on.

I owe them everything!

Inventors who created in succession the cell nucleus,

fermentation, photosynthesis, flagella, spirochete,

and the mitochondria that learned to metabolize oxygen,

which now live in every cell in my body and give me energy,

all of which I knew nothing about for over seventy years.

How they managed to grow the tree

that results in us I can’t comprehend,

but I’m the child of their brilliance.

If I really think about it, I’m astonished and awed

at how they’ve made me.

No, I don’t feel superior.

Sending humans to the moon, splicing genes,

composing Sibelius’ second symphony

writing Dylan’s and Cohen’s songs

are just some of the latest steps

in the evolutionary adventure.

I’m what I am only because of

those who came before.

I stand on the shoulders of giants.

Blues, How Do You Do? *

The air itself is heavy this morning, and I feel heavy with it.

I listened to the man called Lead Belly sing his songs,

heard only sung by others before.

I read about him, even watched a movie of his life.

From this brief and tangential acquaintance,

he sunk into me and sits there in the basement of my soul

where I store things that don’t swallow easy.

I feel the weight of what he endured and survived,

like what millions endured, but specific and individual.

which makes all the difference –

violence done to him and by him,

countered by his indomitable spirit.

He ultimately had a measure of triumph,

even played in England, but he paid a steep price for it

and didn’t live to enjoy it for long.

I’m thankful I’ve had it easy in comparison,

though I created some of my own trouble too.

Sometimes I think I was born lucky,

with what I’ve avoided and survived,

but a voice says “Don’t count on that, son.”

Do you believe in luck?

Today the cruelty that men, mostly,

afflict other men and women with

is an uninvited guest in my soul’s house.

I go about my business as I always do,

but the world weighs a little heavy in my hands today.

Sometimes my mind can’t push aside

what it knows of human suffering –

too much bad news, so much I wish wasn’t true.

I know too much, and I know the importance of knowing,

not being blind to what others suffer and endure.

I didn’t choose to pick up the weight today,

but some days it’s just my time in the barrel.

Good morning Blues,

Blues, how do you do?

I’m doin all right,

Good morning, how are you? he sang.

He said he dealt with the blues by talking to it.

Blues is doin better than me this morning.

It’s just how it is today.

But it’s just the blues, and it’s temporary.

It’s all right, me and Blues can sit here

and keep each other company

until he gets tired of the ambience and goes away,

which in time he will.

Don’t cheer me up.

I don’t need to be robbed of my heart’s weight –

it’s good to feel the weight now and then, so I don’t forget.

It doesn’t worry me.

As another song goes,

The sun will shine

In my back door someday, **

The sun rises as well as sets.

But just for today, it’s cloudy.

Brett Nelson

* "Good Morning Blues”, Lead Belly, The Definitive Lead Belly,

Not Now Music, Ltd.

** ”I Know You Rider”, traditional.

Casualties of the Appetites

Regard this hodge-podge gathering of souls,

this collection of square pegs that didn’t quite fit

in the race of ego – perhaps to their credit?

They’ve been bent to their knees

and have joined together only due to their failure

to corral some wild horses of their natures,

wanting more, and more, and more!

They wanted more . . . of something . . .

Drinking from the well of shared weakness,

they’ve to their surprise found strength together –

strength to tame those horses,

knowing the horses are still bigger than they are

and not to be ridden.

Having a weakness, they’ve learned they’re not weak.

They’ve been granted vision to imagine the possible

and found it within their reach,

finding even what they didn't know they wanted.

In turn they quietly shine the light their stories hold

into the darkness they came from, a beacon to

light the way for other casualties of the appetites

to find the well where they’ve quenched their thirst.

Brett Nelson

Catching the Show

I dreamed I was flying

High up above my eyes could clearly see

The Statue of Liberty

Sailing away to sea Paul Simon, “American Tune”

As the day is dying

under a dark blue-gray sky,

a reddish-orange glow lights clouds on the horizon

from the sun that has already

slipped below the curve of the Earth.

I look at a disappearing contrail

swiped across the sky like a scar

from a jet long gone.

The New Mexico sky puts on a show

like this more nights than not.

You have to catch the moment

as the light fades quickly

into the coming night.

Like that contrail

our less perfect union

has been scarred and wounded,

dying into a darkness

that hides so much in the shadows.

Liberty’s symbol is drifting out to sea,

perhaps toward the country it came from.

It remains to be seen if that nation

or any other can carry the torch it holds.

Don’t blink – make sure you catch the show

before it’s gone.