How fragile is man ...

I had started this poem about two weeks ago, when Shekespeare's one Hamlet soliloquy had a mash-up in my mind with Psalm 8. I finished it up today, motivated by some existential philosophy and comparative religions reading.

HOW FRAGILE IS MAN

How fragile is man in constitution

Like a creature without divine design

Evolved through naturalistic process

Without omnipotentcy’s strictures.

Noble in reason in his own mind’s eye

As maker of gods in his own image

In action how like them, and they like him.

Petty, petulant and vindictive.

Made but little higher than chimpanzees

Crowned not at all by divine glory

Not shaped from clay, but proteins and sugars

A product of eons of slow shaping.

Glory enough is this, if one allows

Taking awe at rude shaping by nature.

Even if a Humean abortion

This life, nonetheless, is still a wonder

Cosmic quantum nothingness, after all

While it might guarantee something starting

Gave continuation no surety

The abortion, if you will, could have died.

Marvel existentially, then, will you

At this Daoist moment in time, so brief;

It, you, and I, may not have more breath.s