Snow in a Planetarium

Foul beast of indignity, 
Release this hold on me, 
Allow my soul to be purified, 
That I may make her less mortified. 
 
A midsummer orb the fairies shake, 
Casting flurries about tapestries that drape the walls 
Around a ballroom of ice in a planetarium of glass, 
Where snow is swirling under the stars. 
Her waltz is a vulnerable ballet 
Plucking the moods from my hand, 
Every bit as fragile as the floor beneath us. 
Lightly I must tread through the dance, 
For even the slightest disturbance 
Can cause a tiny crack, which gains momentum, 
Spreads through the palace we built, 
These porcelain walls, these fixtures of sculpted desires, 
Breaking apart the foundation that binds us. 
Every star mirrors a snowflake that settles 
On the ground where the walls collapse 
After our stormy break from the music. 
The stars dim and the fairies disperse, 
Until we pick up the pieces, re-arrange the floor, 
Reweave the walls- always your favorite puzzle- 
Bending to each other’s will in the architecture of loss, 
Rebuilding it all before these amorous sprites 
Shake us up again in a swoon of passion. 

The Importance of Diversity: How “Freaks” Decorated the Tree of Life

     It seems I have had a fundamental misunderstanding of natural selection for the past few years, ever since adhering to the not-so-original idea that consciousness changes a species' form and not nature.  It was when reading a passage in Siddhartha Mukherjee's book The Gene that the simplicity of natural selection finally came to me: 

 

Somewhere in the vast flock [of finches], a variant was born with a grotesque beak capable of cracking seeds.  As famine raged through the finch world, this gross-beaked variant survived by feeding on hard seeds.  It reproduced, and a new species of finch began to appear.  The freak became the norm.  As new Malthusian limits were imposed- diseases, famines, parasites- new breeds gained a stronghold, and the population shifted again.  Freaks became norms, and normals became extinct.  Monster by monster, evolution advanced."  [Darwin's observations- The Gene, p. 38]. 

 

Mr. Siddhartha, I want to thank you for "enlightening" me on the matter.  I had thought that nature was selecting random beings, based on geography, no doubt, but at a completely arbitrary rate.  The idea that selection doesn't imply fated beings to evolve a species, but the outliers better adapted for a changing environment, has opened my eyes to a less spiritual, more materialistic view on the matter.  How I've arrogantly clung to beliefs without a full understanding is slightly embarrassing.  That tends to happen among the self-taught subjects such as these. 

I positively love the idea that freaks are the progressives of creation, while the normals are weeded out of existence.  Knowing this would give the outliers in our society a lot more confidence in a world that seems to shun any radical departure from the norm.  It proves that diversity is more important than racism or eugenics, that the more diverse we are, the more likely our species will survive and evolve into something else. 

His Airness

We wanted to be like him, we wanted to fly, 
To soar from the free throw line, eager to try. 
It was all so unreal, the way he moved through the air, 
Like space was his own, his reach so unfair. 
He cut through the defense like it didn’t exist, 
Blinding the opposition with a hanging assist 
That came from a place where the court wasn’t real, 
Nay, some netherworld that breeds muscles surreal. 
The skill we admired, the moves we tried to mimic, 
His shot fell through the rim of the world heroic. 
 
Yet we most envied that presence of mind, 
That austere calm which elevated him in endgame 
To heights beyond the realm of mere talent, through 
The Gates of Victory, where Glory beheld his 
Mightiest ambitions, polished up his trophies in eon wax, 
Lifted him off his feet to parade through history 
Like he’d launched himself into the air for a slam.