Vox Populi
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Michael Simms: Tree of Life
When the young man wearing a yarmulke
Asks Excuse me sir are you Jewish?
I want to say yes
I’ve studied history and know
Something about suffering
But that’s not what he means.
He’s trying to find ten men
For a minyan
At Rodef Shalom down the street
And when the young man carrying a bible
Asks Have you heard the Good News?
I want to say Yes!
The cherry trees are blossoming!
And when he asks Have you been saved?
I want to say Yes!
I’ve been saved by poetry
From a childhood of abuse
And humiliation —
That’s a kind of miracle
Isn’t it?
But I know
He wants to know
Whether I’ve accepted Jesus
Into my heart and there’s the rub
Because my heart is so small
And Jesus is so big
When I walk into a cathedral
My heart sings, when I walk
Into a forest the trees sing
And when I walk down the street
The homeless man on the sidewalk
Puts his whole heart into the ukulele
Oh Susanna we are saved
It is springtime in Pittsburgh
And in America
My friend Rashid is an atheist
Because his mother was killed by a bomb.
His father died unhappy and his sister
Has moved to Australia. Rashid blames
All his tragedies on religion
And he may be right.
We all have our tragedies
And maybe God is to blame.
What do I know?
Well, I know this much:
Anyone who has grown a garden, raised a child
Or looked at the sky far from a city
Knows the truth. So, yes, I’m a believer
In the Big Dark, the Ur-unknown,
The sense that my little mind
Is part of the Big Mind
I’ll never know
But I have to say
God, like a lazy cop,
Never seems to be around
When you need Him
Somewhere a soldier is beating a boy
For throwing stones. Somewhere
A priest is raping a child.
Somewhere a girl in a marketplace
Has a bomb strapped to her chest.
My friend and her mother
Were in the Tree of Life synagogue
When a man who hated immigrants
Pushed through the door of their faith
With an automatic rifle.
You know the rest.
—
For Arlene Weiner and Philip Terman
Michael Simms is the founder and editor of Vox Populi. His latest collections of poems are American Ash and Nightjar both published by Ragged Sky.
Copyright 2020 Michael Simms. From American Ash by Michael Simms (Ragged Sky, 2020).
From American Ash by Michael Simms (Ragged Sky, 2020).
Vox Populi 
Thanks Michael. A beautiful poem.
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Thank you, Allison!
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The romantic tree of life makes us wonder about our common ancestor shared with earthworms or beetles or fish or birds or dinosaurs!
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Little did our microbial ancestors know that some of their number would end up evolving into mushrooms, while their brothers and sisters would end up as hydras or humans!
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Evolutionary trial and error led to delicate ‘perfection’ within a single lineage, having nothing to do with universal culmination of survival traits!
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Man isn’t the pinnacle of evolution!
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Man is simply the last surviving twig on a vast but delicate branching bush!
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Species are constantly spawned and thrown into the evolutionary battlefield only to become extinct, sooner or later!
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Morphological, biochemical and genetic data place all life on Earth into a single, sublime evolutionary tree!
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The tree of life represents the phylogeny!
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Phylogeny is the history of organismal lineages as they evolve through time!
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Phylogeny is the evolutionary relationship among earthly organisms in reference to lines of descent!
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Phylogeny presupposes that plants or animals of different types descended from common ancestors!
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The phylogenetic (evolutionary) tree of life is the result of organic descent from earlier ancestors!
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In the phylogenetic (evolutionary) tree of life, a domain is the trunk and species are the thinnest twigs! Living organisms sit like fragile leaves at the tips of the branches!
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A species is a population of organisms that can all interbreed with each other!
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Evolutionarily speaking, life is cheap! Nature treats living and non-living molecules alike!
Life is molecular replication driven by blind evolution!
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More than 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth are extinct!
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Over five billion species came and went into evolutionary oblivion!
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About 15 million species live on earth now!
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From the smallest microbe to the largest whale or the smartest man – all are linked by the passage of genes along the branches of a sublime phylogenetic (evolutionary) tree!
https://naturesalltheres.blogspot.com/2021/10/ancestors.html
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Thank you for this brilliant mix of science and spirituality.
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I love this poem. The silence of God is God.
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Thanks, Lisa. What an interesting paradox you’ve stated!
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It’s from Carolyn Forché’s book _The Angel of History_ translated from the French: Le silence de Dieu est Dieu 🙌
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It’s a great sentence — mysterious, paradoxical.
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Oof, Michael. Such big truth and tragedy here. “My heart is so small, and Jesus is so big.”
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Thanks, Kim. Yes, this was one of those poems that came quickly. Ten minutes and the first draft was done, only a few small revisions needed.
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O.M.G. Michael Simms, what a P O E M . Not only am I with you in what you’re telling us, but totally appreciated HOW you’re telling it. Thank you.
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Thanks, Rose Mary. My friend was shot in the arm and her mother was killed in the synagogue just a block from the college where I taught. America has gone crazy.
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Michael. Wow! Thank you. So much of what you write and post becomes the background for questions snd ruminations throughout my days.
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Thanks, Barb. I value the fact you are listening to me and our other contributors.
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Thank you.
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Thank YOU, Arlene.
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Thank you, Michael, for these words you’ve written. Once again they have given me thoughts for meditation and reflection.
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Thanks, Gene. Your encouragement is much appreciated.
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“You know the rest.” Yes, we do. Which leaves hanging the question “What shall we do about it?” The rest of the rest is up to you, me, all of us.
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Exactly. Thanks, Mel.
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Thanks you for this, Michael. Much appreciated.
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i did not read such vivid and honest account for long time. it is the right time to dot our words, to add the necessary punctuations. Necessity governs our existence and God is expected to be helpful. He does not need our prayers nor physical rituals.
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Thank you so much for your wise and heartfelt response.
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