Somehow the talk came round to mating
Habits of distal and proximal ancestors.
The three of us, unrelated by any shared
Progenitor within the last couple centuries,
But with mostly common ancestors
From one or two thousand years back.
All those bodies tangled before dying,
All those lineages intertwined, all the way
Back to the last ancestor common to all
The ancestors of the three of us, the last
Common to all the humans living, the last
To all the humans that ever were, the last
To all the hominids, all the apes, etc.
What were they up to that we embody only
The strategies that thrived? Like humans
Everywhere we strained to see ourselves
In them as we have strained to see ourselves
In our offspring. Whatever they did, it failed
To keep themselves alive, worked well
To keep their lineages intact. Our conversation
Slid, words like beads on the long abacus
Of the generations, moving forward and back.
A famous forefather for one of us, a century
And a half past, Brother Brigham came up.
His descendant spoke disgustedly of how
He snatched two teenaged sisters as extra
Brides, thanks to their father’s hero worship
Of him, the elder of those two girls becoming
The mother to the great-great grandmother
The descendant now reveres. That anecdote
Was followed by a middle-finger salute
To the habits of Brother Brigham, whereupon
Another of us pointed out that it was thanks
To those habits his descendant sat here.
Later, I shuddered to think how many other
Habits of how many other ancestors helped
Their descendant lineages thrive, how many
Forms of desire and viciousness proved
Effective, how many each one of us might
Carry on along in our dark DNA, unknown.
If I were to choose a faith, I would choose one
In which we believed that somewhere outside
Of this world that we know there was another,
Nothing to do with us, in which hunger
Wasn’t necessary to life, in which waste
And possession weren’t needed to thrive.
Not possible with these physics, I know,
But why believe anything unless you wish it so?
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