Life

My daughter said, “If cars were alive, would they have to be immune to wind burn?” It really set me thinking: how life encompasses the ability to evolve, to develop immunity, to adapt to change.

Rocks - our elemental calendar  - 
set the chapters  
passively laid down 
as Earth's memoir 
each containing sketches, 
skeletal characters , 
a draft of history 
written in layered prints 
pages of impassive stone. 

But rocks do not live.

With life comes activity, 
susceptibility to decay. 
Life is soft 
like the warmth it radiates 
and pliable  
molded to many shapes 
and conditions 

Like a vine 
that grows 
or is cut back 
joining limbs,  
tendrils curling  
feeling its way 
from amoeba to dinosaur 
to oak tree to elephant 
to cave wasp to eagle
from the past to the future 

morphing 
amorphous 
mortal 

life is