For Those Passing \ To The Kansas Board Of Education

Nancy: How cold and refreshing the water was, how special the flavor of well water – as though the tin cup added its own zest.  A cup still has a place in the back of our kitchen drawer and another is tied to our pump handle.  When I was still one of those “folks from away,” this homely thought was a bond between me and the old-timers.

For Those Passing

We always kept a tin cup

by the well, or a dipper;

and stopped too

and pumped and rinsed and drank

at other’s wells.

Sometimes the water ran,

clear, from a pipe at the roadside,

a scythed bank, a cup tied with a string.

Horses drank at the overflow.

Even today,

I like the sweet taste of natural courtesy,

the cup, hung on a fence staple

by the well,

water enough for all.

Alan: In 1999, Kansas deleted the teaching of evolution from the state’s science curriculum.  Despite that, life proceeds according to the reality-based principle, as it always has.

To The Kansas Board Of Education

                                                            on its Consideration of the Future of the Teaching of the Theory of Evolution

Our kind arose, we’re told,

from voles and shrews

or more primitive scurriers yet,

ascending, get by get,

through lemurs, monkeys, apes

(or some such hairy jakes)

until a light flicked on

behind the brow of brawn.

Ergo: Mozart.  The Bomb.

An older story line

insists that every kind

dropped fully formed

from God’s all-pregnant Brain,

which makes us each the same

except that some have heard

of Jesus and the Word

while others nibble grain.

Observing shrews and voles,

I think they’re unamused

and will simply carry on

despite the recent polls

which derogate their long

and lustrous line

to lower rungs.

Nor do they care a whisker

if God or God’s big sister

thought of them first.

As long as seed-heads burst

and meal-mates throng

they’ll do what must be done

long after we’re gone

to dust and dung.