Tennyson won’t mind

If I steal his words.

So many others have done it already.

But he won’t appreciate

My conclusion that

There are no happy endings.

Our inner demons ultimately

Beat out the better angels of our nature

Or so I think.

Where does my pessimism come from?

Certainly not nostalgia for a simpler time

When everyone knew their place,

When nature was

Red in tooth and claw.

A bird bangs into a window

Breaks its neck

And dies.

A force applied to a body can change the magnitude of the momentum or its direction or both.

Nature shrieks.

Newton calculates

But not the madness of people.

When all is said and done

We are left with Blake’s poison tree,

His sick rose,

His Mental Traveler

A cycle

That can’t be broken.

What is your answer

To the Grand Inquisitor?

Where is that moral arc

That bends toward Justice?

People come, people go,

Nothing ever happens.

Same as it ever was.

The earth preceded us,

It will survive us.

In the meantime

We live as we must

With nature

Human

And otherwise.