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June 3, 2009

Not Necessarily Necessary (or That's How Evolution Works)

By Vi Ransel

Use your brain - or lose it.

::::::::

Not Necessarily Necessary
(or Evolution, That's How it Works)

Did you ever think of yourself
as just a vehicle
in which life has hitched a ride,
buffeted here and there
by DNA's inevitable tide?

The form and face
you think you find so pleasing
meets life's criteria
for reproducing itself.
And that big organ -
your brain -
gets hijacked
into the service
of a BIGGER something else.

But the brain
is just icing on the cake.
Life does very well
without one.
Think bacteria and plants,
both much older than man,
or that rapidly adapting
virus H1N1.

And if you don't use
your intelligence,
life can select another feature
that better suits the descendants
of an essentially brainless creature.

But most probably
before life gets around
to rearranging humans,
we will have consumed ourselves
into extinction
and life will just
continue its fine tuning.



Authors Bio:
Vi's works appear widely both in print and online. She conducts Poetry Workshops and gives readings in Central New York. Her latest chapbook is "Sine Qua Non Antiques (an Arcanum of History, Geography and Treachery).

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