I
That's fine, Cheryl,
call it an inadequacy on my part,
no void in my heart which requires
the meddling of a personal savior.
Feel free to saddle your triceratops,
plod after Adam & Eve back to the caves.
I can't accept "original sin" as anything more
than a debilitating hoax:
sex as villified by Christians,
Kinset stonewalling any criticism of their
immoral, illegal, God-sanctioned settlements.
Nor am i so desperate for community I'd join
the 68-percent who believe in angels — & doesn't that
immediately confer a belief in demons?
(Concerning the latter —
aren't our elected officials enough?)
II
Cheryl, i'm overjoyed you have answers,
although you'll never understand why
i prefer existentialism's discontents,
or why i furrow my brow at any mention
of divine intervention —
chaos theory seems to be as blameless,
as competently blind doling out good things
&l bad things to all of us unequally.
& i confess, the cult of the saved amuses me,
the culmination of 6,000 years of non-evolution,
those who have the promise of life everlasting,
& so many of them unhappy, unloving,
so smugly satisfied i'm hot on the heels of Darwin
& Dawkins — overly curious & critical pond scum
doomed to sizzle in a lake of eternal fire.
III
Forgive me, Cheryl,
it was the poetic fall of the year,
& a young man was baptized in Blue River . . .
. . . but no sooner did he breach
scarlet & tangerine leaves
than he knew he'd betrayed himself.
Reason & skepticism are skeletons fused at the hip,
no wishbone wahing up on the shale behind them.
It's a cold, lonely freedom, lass,
one in which i'll spend my last breath
emulating their fortitude in an absence of wings.
Robert O'Neal is the author of four poetry chapbooks and has seen a number of his poems published in the last two decades. He is a past nominee for the Rhysling and Pushcart.