I Don’t Know, My Child.
Dr. Lloyd Jacobs
Ask the rabbi or priest or the crunchers of big data. Ask the
particle accelerators, ask the chemist’s
retort, ask the scientist oligarchs of this senescent world, ask
why moss grows at the foot of a dying willow,
why the roseate spoonbill wades and fishes, how its knees bend.
why creatures and meadows know the time to turn from brown
to green, time for calves to drop, for hens to lay.
why drops of dew become a rosary of beads in winter,
and why our eyes see it and how our eyes remember,
why the warm rains of summer approach slowly, why the blizzard
lashes and the wind prays in soughing song.
why geese migrate and return and fledge, why the mockingbird
mimics and the cuckoo cuckolds and usurps.
why the years make one gentle, why wounds heal, why hair grows and how infants learn continence.
why God wears the universe like a tattered shirt, soft with bemused affection, a donned paean of poured out love.
Dr. Lloyd Jacobs is President Emeritus of The University of Toledo, he has published 3 colletions of poetry, previously he was a professor of vascular surgery at the University of Michigan
