THUD

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

A thing of humans and of mammals, grief

Is something that the universe contains

Sans evolutionary purpose.  Darwin’s brief

Excludes this sorrow in the hearts and brains:

No suffering.  What can such a thing achieve,

What biological intent propose?

The elephant moves bones.  Does this relieve

The urge to life?  The grief of mother grows

To groan inside a doe beside her dead, dead fawn,

Accomplishing precisely nothing, no,

Nth nothing.  What exactly can be drawn

From this in science?  What can grieving grow?

It grows more grief. That’s all.  Its aim is blank.

Empirically its studies stutter, clank.

©  Phillip Whidden