The Evolution of Love
by Michael R. Burch

Love among the infinitesimal
flotillas of amoebas is a dance
of transient appendages, wild sails
that gather in warm brine and then express
one headstream as two small, divergent wakes.

Minuscule voyage—love! Upon false feet,
the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep
toward self-immolation: two nee one.

We cannot photosynthesize the sun,
and so we love in darkness, till we come
at last to understand: man’s spineless heart
is alien to any land.
                                   We part
to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears,
amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres ...
and still we sink.
                              The night is full of stars
we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours.

Have we such cells within us, bent on love
to ever-changingness, so that to part
is not to be the same, or even one?
Is love our evolution, or a scream
against the thought of separateness—a cry
of strangled recognition? Love, or die,
or love and die a little. Hopeful death!
Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath.

Keywords/Tags: love, microscopic, amoebas, pseudopods, microbes, photosynthesis, darkness, night, stars, evolution, shared breath

Currently inhabited in the crevices on the walls
Separated from one side to the other,
Contemplating my fall.
Fixated on the perimeter
Collapsing in on me
My time and being is micro,
Micro-me is managed until the crevices release
My inevitable sea of crumbs.
My inevitable sea of crumbs.

Frequently gazing in the cracks on the floor
There's a light too bright coming in,
Impenetrable for my eyes,
Beneath lies a cultivating door.
Illustrating my final chances
But the floor's ascending on me,
Slowly taking me.
My time and being is micro
Micro-me is managed until the cracks receive,
My irrevocable sea of crumbs.
My irrevocable sea of crumbs.

moment to moment
we are the sum total of
our chemicals

we think of ourselves
we think of others
as an average of our
time and spacial synergy
an anatomical amalgam
a biological brine

frankensteins with
personalities, commonalities and
unique agendas
sprinkled with neuroses that
range from microscopic to
catastrophic, whether
chemical reaction or
hyperbolic extraction

you can choose to
canonize or demonize
as long as you can
recognize
the flesh and the blood
versus the fantasized