Okay. Multiple choice time: would you rather,
in your final breaths on this planet, be given
incontrovertible physical proof that God exists,
even if we don’t always use God as we should –
or be given incontrovertible proof that we are
not the only planet with intelligent lifeforms
in the universe, even if we don’t always use
intelligence as we should? This early morning,
as the mourning doves softly coo their laments
from the telegraph-telephone-cable-fiberoptic
wires above the dew-covered lawn – the newspaper
rolled in its thin & easily pierced protective
plastic at driveway’s end – will it be the familiar
or the foreign, the alien or the divine? And would
it make a difference if it wasn’t one god,
but instead (affirmed) that there were seven gods,
not too different from Kronos’ kids – proof that
the early Greeks had a few things right in their
wine, learning systems, cosmic maps? Or proof
that there’s not just one other planet with
intelligent alien life, but multiple, at least eight
confirmed other Goldilocks planets, & perhaps
a ninth if / once scientists can resolve that familiar
Plutonian debate – underworld for the yang
to this Heaven-lit ying? Before answering,
consider how little actually revolves around us.
We might have only just begun evolution.
Before answering, account for the fact that
scientists were only first invented in 1834,
less than two hundred years ago. Well, not
the people themselves, but the term scientist
itself, because often before we place a modern
name tag on something – scientist or priest or
charlatan – those things did exist in practice
prior to that naming, & just because our
particular culture came up with a new way
to gather fundamental elements – imagination
to cosmic microbes – doesn’t mean they didn’t
already exist, likely on the distant fringes.
Newton never knew fission, Thomas Jefferson
was oblivious to dinosaurs, & Lord Byron’s
daughter only anticipated computers, even if she
didn’t name IBM or Dell, never held an Apple
in her palm (her eyes too fascinated to
acknowledge the eyestrain or techno-headache),
but that didn’t stop her from fascination,
possibility, & poetry until her last breath,
curious but content, aware that her awe-filled
thirty-six years – like the first time we see
the world through a microscope, telescope,
or beneath-the-water-surface-over-the-reef
snorkel mask – were more blip than unchangeable
definition: an electron jumping among orbits.