Appetite for the Divine

Saint Paul, 18 January 2006

Long ago

In defiance of mortality

One of us began to bury our dead

Limb-by-limb to earthen blankets

Where shovels once sideswiped supple roots

Disease less rampant

No sun-bleached teeth protruding

Absent from desiccated skulls

An appetite for the divine ensued

When surviving clans prepared to reunite

Steadfast in spring

We're oddly driven to sow seeds

To run our hands across stone walls

That converge to the only horizon we’ve known

Where darkness cedes to annual morning glories

As autumn falls

We succumb to grotesque ritual

Grieve dumbfounded at ceremonial mounds

Simpering in chorus before platted bread-loaves

Where petal-less poppies once split their pods

Finally come winter

Instinct draws us to feckless ruins

Bounding stair treads trodden and worn

Resigning to what’s left of the refectory

Where hot meals once were served

Notes:

This poem considers the possibility that natural selection selected humans

predisposed to receptiveness to the concept of the afterlife (or, for that

matter, predisposed to receptiveness to a concept of the supernatural that

defies logic or lacks credible empirical evidence). One of our antecedents

might have buried a companion to prepare that companion for what was believed

to be the afterlife. Unbeknownst to subsequent followers of this ritual was that

burying decaying bodies improved sanitary conditions thereby increasing the

survival rate of its practitioners.