On your birthday, Charles Darwin, answer me this,
How is it that membrane becomes a skin
And whiskers bud from it
And glands evolve within?
And how is it the slithering worm
Sprouts fins then stumps and flippers
To quit the deep and waddle up and down the scree?
And what selects a folded cortex
Complexing ever more
To advantage the organism
O'er those which came before?

So, you two hundred ten today
In wondering reason begged
To explain away which had come first
The chicken or the egg.

You said it's about selection
Which leads to genesis
Of traits that favor fitness
Breeding that instead of this.

And wish that I could ask you
What spark of thought aflame
Kindled tindered theory
Which still burns and bears your name?

And one more simple question,
Charles Darwin, if I may.
Since the pastoral economy
Of meat and grass and milk
Eclipsed the hunter-gatherers
And the others of that ilk,
Among these things, Charles Darwin,
All those things you guessed,
Which came first, Charles Darwin,
...the baby or the breast?

Last night my house was Hoo-ed
Through brick and wall and window pane.
It was exactly half passed two
When I heard that large eyed feather brain
Proclaim his amorous design.

That persistent devil Hoo-ed and Hoo-ed
And drew me to my frozen porch
To view his pleasant pulchritude
Spot-lighted by a moon beam torch
While perched upon a wintry pine.

"Hoo-Hoo to you." I cried.
"She's gone and you'll not find her here.
But you can stay and Hoo all day
If you think that she'll appear
To seek who Hoo's upon my house."

Then, back to bed I crept
And heard him Hoo and Hoo and Hoooo-oo
Till asleep my dreams concept
An owl in silent glide pursue
Across my frosty lawn a mouse.

An antidote to ennui,
My friends of age, perchance
With hands held high and feet askew
Take note when old men dance.

Cast off care and bend thy knee
O, thou poetic host,
Students of Dylan, Derlith, Frost
And Bill, the Holy Ghosts.

When banjos bang the Bluegrass beat
With rhythm ye entranced
Release thy souls thus freed my friends
Step high in old men's dance.

Double shuffle, heal and toe
Ceili, reel or clog
Kilted, combed, go Strip the Willow
And dance the epilogue.

With children, friends or wife, embraced,
Or maiden once romanced
Or all alone with heart, my friends,
Rejoice when old men dance.


Mango VanRasp
11/2/19

It makes a salad it does of its leaf while green
It smells of cocoa it does of its root while roasted
It pours a wine it does of its flower when fermented
It forms a sail it does of its seed which sails away
The harvest is best it is of its hoard upon the dun
When the poet plucks the plant he does while dodging cough and sniffle
And the wine is best it is when poured on April sun.