Darwin’s Cathedral
I have never understood
how foot soldiers at
Gettysburg, or in Flanders
or Attica, could trample
crops in a field, uproot
another man’s fences.
They, of all men, would
comprehend the labor lost.
We make the world we live in,
as birds form their nests,
termites their tunnels and hills.
Even the realm of God and sin
and goodness and song
is ours. We build like coral
on the efforts of our ancestors.
What we destroy is a breach
in the honeycomb.
—Gale Swiontkowski
____
(Title from the book by David Sloan Wilson, 2002)