All Before Breakfast

 

Physicists have theory and forces,
Cosmologists the quark and black hole,
Philosophers are after life’s meaning,
but I want to understand soul.


I'm after its very beginnings,
whence it comes, how it came, why it does;
I’ve jillions and zillions of questions—
Here’s the reason I’m asking: Because.


I wonder if soul was created
when the universe came with a Bang.
Was atomic combustion our father?
Is God yin to the physicist's yang?


Perhaps the soul dwells in the helix
undeciphered mathematical codes,
whose secrets we’ll one day uncover
and poetically translate as prose.


Could it be that natural selection
can explain the presence of soul,
and Darwin's theory of evolution
shows the pattern from partial to whole?


Is the soul prenatally inchoate?
Is it a remnant, like a gill?
Is it only for decoration?
Is it something you can kill?


Was half carried inside of your father?
Did your mother contribute part, too?
Could it be that with fertilization
the soul starts to grow within you?


Does the soul appear with the hearbeat?
Is it expressed along with the first kick?
Can you pinpoint the time in gestation
when from not the soul transforms to quick?


Could it be that the soul is generic,
universal, just one-size-fits-all,
with no choice of model or color,
neither toddler, nor plus-size, nor small?


Or maybe it’s rather specific,
and each soul's just one of a kind,
belonging to only one person,
each recipient on purpose assigned.


I could posit soul numbers are finite,
each delivery dwindles supply,
until heaven’s storehouse is empty,
its wellspring completely run dry.


Or what if we're really each other
on a Recycled Souls family tree?
If I traced your genealogy,
would I discover you're me?


But maybe the soul is amorphous,
indescribable, something like blue,
and no science can ever reveal
this invisible essence that’s you.


Does the soul continue without us?
Is it somewhere in time and in space?
When this life as we know it is over
is the soul metamorphosed by grace?


If Soul minus X were a constant,
and soul’s wavelength a factor of time,
if soul were explained as a function,
would this mean that the soul's not sublime?


Maybe God is behind all creation,
and we each have a purpose and plan,
the soul sheer enigmatic reminder
of all that we don’t understand.


Alas! I am only a poet—
God’s existence is over my head;
neither master of physics nor numbers,
I'm a master of questions instead.


And I'm weary of all of this wondering.
In the end, all I want is one sign:
If each soul has a predestined other,
tell me how I will recognize mine!