February 06, 2018

Universes

From Finite (c) 2002



The Universe bends into black holes and like mitosis
divides, leaving the initial universe
(this one we assume) somewhat intact,
then forms a sister universe.  Similar bang of nitrogen,
helium, carbon and all, starting the billions of years cycle
in another pocket of seemingly infinite space.

Somewhere else prokaryotes rule a sexless earth.
We’d call such a world simple as though
our shopping excursions and parking lots are complex.
Some other universe can’t support life at all.
With no one to provide name or meaning to the constellations,
even god cannot exist.

I suppose several universes are likewise inhabited
in this sense of spirit-soul-body configuration.
Perhaps one universe contains three hundred thousand plus
species of flowers, a myriad of beast, bug, fowl,
yet has a balance between oxygen and carbon
undisturbed by clear cuts, hair spray and diesel fumes
because there progress was tempered by education.

And it is there, where Darwinism, survival of the fittest—
may the best evolution win—where Darwinism is played out
so perfectly it could almost be called heaven.

And if I believed in Reincarnation—
which seems to me more hope than fact
unless reincarnation counts as our molecules
fertilizing land, recycling through grass
through cattle intestines and dung rolled
by the dung beetle, eaten by the tern,
ad infinitum until we have, theoretically,
been a part of it all—
and if I believed in Reincarnation
then I would want my resurrection in such a universe.

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