my barber asked if I believed in evolution
“I didn’t come from no ape,” he said
I told him he came from his mother
that we all come from our mothers
although it is the paternal line
that everyone seems to focus on
my own mother, Christian, a Catholic
settled the matter when she said
that God used evolution to create us
she was a peace-maker, not a theologian
I do not have the body of my ten-year-old self
any more, but it does look a lot like
the one I had yesterday
the world of appearances percolates up
from somewhere, one supposes, in
a kind of maternal line with things
pregnant with the possibility
of thing-cum-thing, of change itself
whatever on earth that means
I get suspicious of things
when they start to seem too important
and I remember, one day a stranger
saw me all worked up and rushing around
in an aggravated bustle
and said, “relax”
