DAY 8

Intent, I watched my knife
Saw stubbornly at my chicken breast.
“Dear,” my wife exclaimed
“You’re going to scratch the china.”
I looked up shyly
To meet the stares of wife and guests.

“He’s been working so very hard, the dear,
I’m afraid it’s catching up with him.”
She looked to me, to verify what she had said,
And so I took my dinner plate and broke
It on my head.

“She’s right,” I said, and brushed a broccoli from my collar,
“And what’s more,” I raved, meeting each eye
Of every guest, and finally glaring at my wife,
“I’ve just succeeded, now, this very afternoon,
In blending inert chemicals and generating life!”

The guests were panicked, my dear wife crying,
But I could not let the evening end,
Them thinking me insane.
“Come see,” I said, pulling at their sleeves.
And, though reluctantly, they came
Into my lab beside the laundry room.
Pointing to a petri dish, “I’ve created life!” I cried.
They looked, I looked, they frowned and left
And I sat down, as God must someday do, and wept.
The life I’d made that day had died.