Monday Poem

Looking for Evidence
Jim Culleny

Poor Darwin.
Forever dissed by people-of-the-book,
he rummaged through bins of bones
flinging one after another
over his shoulder
looking for a missing link.

Femurs and fibulas went flying.
Knuckles and kneecaps rained.
Disks —the pride of vertebrates—
hit walls and ricocheted like pucks
slap-shot by blood-thirsty Bruins.
The thud of ulnas and clavicles
drummed rhythms on wallboard as they hit.
They landed here and there in the dusty landscape
only to be buried again in the sands of time,
found by future anthropologists,
and dismissed once more (no matter what)
by latter-day people-of-the-book.

It's gotta be here somewhere, murmured
Charles. Everything else so elegantly fits.

Meanwhile, at a bin to Darwin's right
marked "Creation, Myths, and Miracles"
Reverend Pat dug in too.

He tossed a leather-bound edition
of the Epic of Gilgamesh
onto a heap in the corner which
nudged a volume of the Enuma Elish
that slid to the floor and settled
beside a story of how a flower
grew from Vishnu's navel.

Junk, grumbled Pat . Absurd junk
that can't hold a candle to a talking snake.

He'd been hoping for a scrap
of Genesis notarized by God
but found only a sheepskin note
inscribed "Adam and Eve
are the apples of the old man's eye."
Good enough for me, said Pat
and ducked as the skull of a chimp
sailed by.