Evolution
You are sure the Hadron Collider will prove
in pictures that there is only one God particle.
You go by the Book, a scholar of shalt nots
and shalts. The top of your class,
you’ve grown to the tallest height allowed
and feel blessed to wed a girl named Faith.
You practice everything you preach
to little brothers looking up
and save the sinning mouths of debate class.

You obey the school dress code that narrows
your vision to a deeper understanding
as you pray inside the iron gate that holds all truth,
as you stroll bright halls whose bulbs are never changed.

It’s a riddle that some dinosaur fossils have feathers,
but you’d like to lecture Darwin
that you’ve never seen birds laying raptor eggs.

So far you’ve taught Moses, your parrot,
a large vocabulary from the Old Testament.
That the bird knows Jesus! must be a miracle.

If more than one God particle appears in the picture,
which one will you obey?

 Creation
With lab assistants named Google and Yahoo,
you search for a photograph of God,
some say to prove a negative.
You magnify microscopic galaxies
to find a theory of everything,
to prove the theory of your soul
is merely quantum energy and dying light.

Still it’s a riddle how quarks appear from nowhere,
though all God’s children are bound by physical law.
Still it’s a riddle how atoms disappear
but reappear when thought or sought.

If more than one God particle is caught on film,
which one will you observe?

I take a walk to the edge of my world.
Curious tonight, I wander too far
from the guarded parking deck.
The smell of something new lingers
on my tailored suit. I meet for the first
time a perfume of alley rats,
the curious mixed tea
of animal and human urine,
the moans of human waste.

I meet a boy who seems a man
who has never set foot on swept streets.
His race is dirt, his color streaked.
A scavenger with wild eyes, he stands barely
above the mouth of the alley trash can,
his torn sleeves flapping dusty flags,
his fingers probing for treasure in a haystack
where lurk mostly needles and bloody rags.

He pauses to scan me whose tie is tight.
My cologne clashes with his sense of smell,
I who found the fortune to live another day.
He asks where I found my shoes,
so shiny you can see yourself--
really lucky they have laces too.

Are the soles worn out?
he wonders aloud.