Darwin makes dinner,

And it’s not as complicated as it seems.

Time passes insistently

In his kitchen of stone and oak–

The hearth stoked, the knives

Always sharp.

His ingredients stalk one another

Across the table tops;

Wait in ambush behind earthen jars;

Growl and

Hiss and

Chirp and

Call in the pantry.

Darwin’s dinner

Selects itself, naturally.

The least fit is best for him.

He does almost no work

(aside from warming the oven

And collecting the cutlery).

He places in a pan

The mangled and extinct;

The mate-less and exhausted;

The too easy prey perhaps still gasping

On his counter.

He plucks mammal and invertebrate

From his plate,

Without prayer of mastication–

Swallowing elaborate swallows

(not incautiously).

Darwin’s dinner

Tumbles down his mighty throat

As he wipes his beard with an errant sleeve.

(In the end, the dishes scattered in the sink,

Are a string of clinking islands.)