And fearing the heat death of our planet
we reread it might be true, that founding tale
we’ve reimagined over the years—
how water from somewhere celestial
created an ocean as the planet formed,
washing across rocky accretions,
how a simple chain of weathering steps
might have given rise to amino acids,
how lightning strikes might have forged
the bonds that dried under the warming skies,
volcanoes’ rain shifting the acidity to couple
them up as they dried out into the strands
that could replicate—and given oceans’
hydrothermal vents and time enough,
evolve the single cell, its concentration
gradient, ferns and trees and the garden
and you and me, the ruinous hungers
of our gifted-with-knowledge species–
for now we’ll need Noah’s story
retold for a desert of sand dunes
to rescue the endless forms most beautiful
that Darwin named to us and bequeathed.
Robin Chapman
Robin Chapman’s work has been awarded the Cider Press Book Editors’ Award, the Posner Poetry Award, the Wisconsin Library Association’s Outstanding Book of Poetry Award, and the Helen Howe Poetry Award from Appalachia. She lives in Madison, WI. Panic Season (Tebot Bach, 2022, available from spdbooks.org) is her newest book.
Portage Magazine 