Quandry

It never ceases to amaze, to puzzle—

From the time we take our first

wobbly steps on life’s journey, the

moment we grow to question the

oblique and absorb the well-defined.

When language coats the tongue, and

we transform baby babble into some

coherent linguistic stream of meaning,

when it is deemed by our appointed

guardians that we have sufficiently

matured, it is then we are dressed

for the day and shuffled off to the

institutions of our learning where we

are summarily stuffed to the gills with

a litany of words and deeds, good and

evil. When two plus two equal four,

when each sentence includes an

appropriately tensed verb, when we

can identify and delineate animal

from vegetable and mineral, when

a slap of the hand teaches us to revolt

or reach out at our own risk, it is with

these our story begins in earnest. And

thus, we are assigned the responsibility

of sorting through chaff, pile after pile

of data we have received in search of

the devious and the divine. Processes

of progress and the declination of our

species never cease to amaze, while at

the same time a puzzlement lingers. And

for all it’s worth, we are struck with

these unremarkable words …

Oh, the humanity!

Chris Hanch 5-11-18