Who tells a man to come or go
when both these choices could be right?
Who tells a bird to build a home
and how to put it all together;
whether in April or in May and
on a day that’s dull or one that’s bright;
but not at night when owls are known
to eat the young of others?
Mothers know if baby’s well
or not; she knows the smells.
Salmon fight a river’s flows;
they have a nose that senses home,
and ears that hear their distant food
in higher spawning ground.
Who sets the mood for the Monarch migration
to Mexico and back, taking four generations?
Where is the clock, the bell that chimes,
to tell these fish to leave the sea
and birds to fly to warmer climes?
We take it all for granted.
Is it God’s work? His Grand Solution?
Or Darwin’s version of Evolution?
Whatever it is, it’s beyond our ken,
a question of belief with an answer that lurks
in the great unknown. I see myself as one of Darwin’s men:
it has lived and will live because it’s strong and its life-style works.