Tag Archives: evolution

A Semi-Tall Tale for The. Sunday Whirl Wordle 650 and NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 12

4 Replies
Image by Satish Nagapuri on Unsplash
JDB Photo
JDB Photo

 

 

 A Semi-Tall Story

Once upon a time, dear friends, long before creation,
the spirits of the universe formed a delegation
to invent our ancestors: the cell  and then the fish,
and eons later, they decided to fulfill the wish
of the lowly haddock to wallow in the mud
with toes and feet to stay erect while walking through the crud.
And thus was born the dinosaur, king of a twig-strewn world,
crashing through the underbrush as all it touched unfurled.

Those parts of earth unbroken eventually gave birth
to animals less violent and much smaller in girth.
Warm-blooded, they awakened to divine memory,
invented words and realized that what had come to be
was what the spirits of the universe had foreseen long ago
while looking in a crystal ball. The predicted it, and lo,
that chain occurred unbroken—ending with you and me,
sitting here upon the ledge of infinity. 

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 650, the prompt words are: twigs divine wake blood wallow cell memory ancestors crystal creation ledge unbroken.  I am combining this prompt with the NaPoWriMo prompt from two days ago, which I forgot to do.  The 12th prompt of the monthly series was to write a tall story. This one is only tallish as it’s based on evolution. The Spirits of the Universe might qualify as the tall part of the tale.

Evolution or Devolution? For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 632

6 Replies

I moved the ammonite fossil from the wall ledge to the ground, where it was safer from nudgings by cats,

Evolution or Devolution?

Their footsteps  form a timepiece pressed into the rock:
portraits of a planet learning how to walk.
Bent on following a plan well out of their control,
instincts prodding them to race to fulfill their role.

Each tiny part of nature bound to do its part,
facing threats against the evolution of the heart.
What part of mankind’s journey waits around the bend?
Will our progress finally bring about our end?

 

For Sunday Whirl Wordle 632 the prompt words are: control rock portrait timepiece bent plan threats instinct race part footsteps planet

Next Step

10 Replies

Next Step

Life is a conundrum often unresolved.
Every day another sin to be absolved.
from transgression to transgression, mankind’s been known to scuttle,
searching for excuses to use in their rebuttal
of charges that we’ve ruined nature’s sweet confections,
destroying with what we have wrongly seen as our corrections.
With a flippant attitude, missing the wider view
of how we affect everything with each thing that we do.
Thus, impartial in her actions, nature then corrects,
working out solutions to ills that she detects.
How she must be wondering if mistakes in our past
might lead to the solution that mankind cannot last.
And so she’s started over by altering our genes,
thus aiding all mankind to evolve into machines!

 

Prompt words for the day are flippant, rebuttal, conundrum, impartial, correction .

What Next?

18 Replies

What Next?

When mankind makes its toodle-oo,
thus closing down this human zoo,
I’m sure that there will be a sequel
that is more than mankind’s equal,
for in evolution’s quest,
nature goes from least to best.
Each form of life has not receded
from what form of life preceded.
When some great calculator reacts
to what’s been lost through human acts,
what difference will it make for gain
that will surpass the human brain?
And . . .
will music, poetry and art
vanish in that great restart?

 

 

 

The prompt words for today are quest, equal, toodle-oo, react,precede and calculator.

Nature’s Tithe

5 Replies

 

Nature’s Tithe

Cold drafts inspired carpet and swift winds gave birth to walls.
Thus, human folk keep warm and dry in their shopping malls.

A transcript of the weather might reflect our evolution.
Good turns to bad and bad to good with each revolution

of a world that seems to extract her scheduled tithe.
Nine days in ten we celebrate. The other day we writhe.

And yet we find solutions to all of her disaster.
Trials affecting change to make development go faster.

 

 

Prompts for today are inspired carpet, transcript, keeping, tithe and affect.

Empty Cities: NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 4 Liminal Poem

18 Replies

Click on images to enlarge.

Empty Cities

The ghosts of hamburgers lurk in the air,
waiting for children no longer there.
All of their voices turned empty and spare,
waiting lines empty and every chair
devoid of bodies. Each table bare.
To where have they gone? Do you know where?
If people all vanished, would the world care?
Would the lynx and the bobcat, the fox and the hare

and deer from the forests and crocodiles dare
to enter our shopping malls and broach the stair
forever silent, frozen and still?
Would they climb the escalator’s metal hill
and move into spaces filled with our things?
Jackets and towels and soup bowls and rings?
Refrigerators, bicycles and shoes,
donuts and bagels and pretzels and booze?

Tip over displays and ponder just what
we ever accomplished with all of this glut?
When we are gone will the animals wonder
what they can do with all of this plunder?
Will they swim in our pools and loll on our greens?
Will they scratch their wild backs on our mowing machines?
Leap over our cars and stream over our bridges,
enter our houses and nose through our fridges?

Will they make a nest of the socialite’s mink?
Have dozens of babies in our kitchen sink?
Remove stuffing from mattresses to create burrows?
Tunnel under our lawns to make ridges and furrows?
Will monkeys swing from our huge chandeliers?
Chimps drive our cars and strip all the gears?
Cows graze through our parks and horses run free,
no saddles inhibiting their liberty?

Just imagine our world once mankind is vanished.
Once we’ve insured we are finally banished.
Clean air and clean oceans. No traffic or noise.
No cars and no airplanes. No rush hour noise.
No traffic or crowds. No exhaust pipes or trash.
No credit cards, coupons or coinage or cash.
What we saw as improvements will all rust away,
covered with vines, to slowly decay.

Mankind just a segment of time’s stony layers,
our music and art and headlines and prayers
all just one strata within the earth’s stories,
buried like all of her other brief glories.
After we’ve suffered earth’s most recent purge,
and we’re all gone, what else will emerge?

 

For NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Four, Liminal Poem

Evolution

9 Replies

 

Evolution

Evolution’s done with behemoths. They take up too much space.
They were too slow and lumbering—lacking in poise and grace.
For this they paid the penalty of their eradication,
replaced by small creatures who consumed a smaller ration.

The intention was that humans would be weaker and less needy.
Who knew that they would turn into creatures so cruel and greedy?
Anything but genial, they grabbed what they could grab,
bringing devastation via bomb and gun and lab.

If larger didn’t work, it’s clear that smaller did no better.
Once again, nature’s creations have turned out her debtor.
She extracts her interest through flood and hurricane,
drought and deadly plagues and other methods more arcane.

Working up from smaller—from the atom and the quark,
nature reached its summit in Jurassic Park,
then created on a smaller scale ’til it arrived at man—
Homo sapiens her newest failed flash in the pan.

Now, where will she go from here? Tinier or bigger?
Will her next experiment be flyer, swimmer, digger?
Will she rue the excesses of the human brain
Or will she make the same mistake over once again?

Can she find a way at last to alter the machine,
by infusing it, at last, with the human gene?
Is a cyborg race of men the way that nature’s going?
Will mankind be coupled with things whirring, blinking, glowing?

Will we all be halfway clones of who we were before?
Will we think past generations to be the stuff of lore?
Have humans made themselves passé or will they rise once more—
a little less self-serving , less blemished at the core?

Prompt words today are behemoth, space, penalty, genial.

Evolution

6 Replies

Evolution

It is said in the beginning that light was of the essence,
as though the entire world was composed of luminescence.
Then particles of matter as the world went rogue
and cells and organisms finally came into vogue.

Evolution would not falter or heed any denial.
Eve wandered through the garden, then floated up the Nile.
Era after era, she mutated and changed,
her features and her hairstyles altered and rearranged.

The things she hung upon herself from shoulders and from ears
were revised era by era as she sauntered down the years.
Wandering down pathways or sauntering fashion’s aisles,
she flashed her varying feathers while testing out her wiles.

From grass skirts to hoop skirts, bustles to bustiers,
man has followed woman, doing what she says.
It is a grand illusion that men control the world
when the world’s whole future lies so tightly curled

within every woman, just waiting to get out,
for when it comes to reproduction, women hold the clout.
Men may seek to end the world and bring about its doom,
but  woman holds the next world safely within her womb.

 

 

 

Word prompts today are luminescence, adept, denial and rogue.

Evolutionary Miracles

14 Replies

IMG_0241

Evolutionary Miracles

It’s the birthday of feathers! The dinosaurs grew them.
Who knew evolution was going to do them?
They wished for relief from plodding the earth,
so they lightened their bones and depleted their girth.
As they worked on their balance, were they assuming
that soon they’d be soaring and swooping and zooming?
It’s true evolution gives gift after gift,
but nothing more magic than providing lift!

Prompt words today are feathers, assume, wish, balance and birthday.

Equal to the Challenge?

17 Replies

Equal to the Challenge?

Whereas  the stage of life for folks my age is likely terminal,
the young are at a stage that is best described as germinal.

They boomerang through life, it seems, from one thing to another—
from party girl to partner, to wife and then to mother.

Their progress through this life is one that we have laid the ground for.
Where we have already been is likely where they’re bound for.

Those obstacles that soured us are ones we hope they’ll solve.
I guess that is the means by which humans must evolve.

War, disease and famine, global warming through pollution—
 we set up each problem. Will they create the solution?

Prompt words today are boomerang, terminal, young, sour and progress.