San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly

Charles Harmon

Evolution of the Weak

I’m an atheist on Mondays, stormy stormy Mondays
Blue, blue Moondays, maniacal moody magical Mondays
For how else could I feel on a day named for our past?
Worship of the moon, now an allegory of the cave
A shadowy, shape-shifting pale reflection
Of the true source of light, the glorious and brilliant sun.
And so, the weekend done, the weak must go back to work….

By Tuesday I’m agnostic, meaning without knowledge,
But I really have a lot of knowledge, mainly knowing,
That the more we know, the more we know
How little we know, or can know, and so
I question how an omnipotent, omniscient, beneficent being
Could permit war, starvation, disease, earthquakes, tsunamis,
The slaughter of all the innocents by man’s inhumanity,
Or can we blame it all on a lack of faith, or the wrong faith?

On Wotansday I’m a healthy pagan, battling it out with
The forces of nature, riding with the Valkyries, fighting it out
With the Olympians and the Roman Pantheon,
Our human, all too human strengths and weaknesses made manifest
As embodied in the polytheistic solipsistic creations of our progenitors.

By Thor’s Day, by Jove, I’m a pantheist, and in good company, too
With the likes of Einstein, Spinoza, and Giordano Bruno,
Just hoping I don’t end up like Bruno, who was horribly burned,
Because he believed that God is everything and everything is God,
But the Church wanted its cut by playing the middleman,
So Bruno was cut out.

On Friday I am free, free to be me, whatever I want to be:
An animist, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Moslem, a Scientologist,
A Quaker, a Mormon, a Sufi, a Taoist, Zoroastrian, a pilgrim
Searching, searching, everything or nothing at all,
Just waiting for the call….

Of course, on Saturday, I have to be a Jew.
No more Roman orgies of Saturnalia on Saturn’s Day.
No more riding the golden calf and questioning Moses.
Religion has evolved so far, but aren’t we still the
Chosen people, who wrote the Bible and made man free?
The only question now is, whether to be Reformed,
Orthodox, non-practicing, assimilated, conservative,
Or full-blooded Hasidic? Or maybe a Jew for Jesus?

Sundays you’ll find me in the church:
Here is the church and here is the steeple,
Open the doors and see all the Sheeple,
But don’t we need a Good Shepherd
For aren’t we like lost sheep?
And ‘though we’ve come a long way
Through evolution of the species, of culture, of religion,
Aren’t we finally all alone in the big universe,
In need of a little company, even if imaginary?
It is the evolution of the weak,
Our beliefs can make us strong, even if they are
Promises of pie in the sky when we die.

And so Monday finds me a disbeliever again,
Stormy, stormy, blue Moonday….