Last week I speculated about the meaning of life and whether life had its own meaning apart from those individuals or even species that inhabit it. At the same time I was writing that piece I was also writing a poem about the same thing. We call both prose and poetry writing, but they are very different. The process of writing them is different and we feel different reading it.
Prose is like another person beaming their thoughts and their way of thinking directly into your brain. Poetry, we hope, connects at an even deeper level, a level of intellect yes, but also feeling and emotion. Not every poem connects with every person but when it does, something magical happens.
Here is a poem on last week’s prose topic of being a transmission vessel for DNA.
ביצה (Egg)
A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.
– Samuel Butler
I am a transmitter sending a signal
from the primordial past. My purpose long fulfilled.
A carrier of encrypted code that emerged from the pools of Eden
consorted with angels and giants
and wandered out of Africa establishing a tribe
of genetic material in the fertile crescent.
Slavery, kingdom, empire, each another shipping vessel
and expulsion after expulsion carrying DNA
to Asia, across Europe,
over sea to Australia and through the Americas.
After 3,000 years, the tribe is still dwelling
on how badly Egypt ended
freedom joy diminished drop by drop.
The egg doesn’t care about that.
Its sole concern is the next chick
and making a path to the future.
The egg doesn’t glance back
at the old bird lying in dust.