in genes and nurture

for rightness to endure

the genes in me

want to seed themselves across the world,

I can feel their imperative to be, to endure,

as the vessel of my body, within which they live for now, 

that body is past the mountain top and on the downhill slide,

how far down the slide? who knows. . .

in the night I feel the genes within ache to endure,

for long minutes I only feel an anxiousness,

then when I realize that I am driven to fear death

because I crave for who I am to endure, for nature to copy itself anew,

yet old enough to remember  the genes who built the template

I have lived and expanded upon,

when I realize that I feel better,

as in the night I remember my children

who express the best of who I am,

my grandchildren who carry the genes,

and both children and grandchildren honor me and my genes,

while doubling and tripling my gifts

with the gifts of those who have been drawn to come together

in the love that hope must find to endure,

as each expresses the best of who each is and can be,

in the night I realize that we humans also can endure

in the nurture of our culture,

in the parenting, in the teaching, in the witnessing,

and it does not matter much how I endure—

whether I endure in my genes

or in the gifts I readily bestow upon my students,

my colleagues, my friends, on any who read my poetry

and thus travel with me in the journey to understand 

for we are as a species needs the software as much as the hardware,

I work to get past needing my work to be cited

as long as it can help potential to realize itself in the world,

I can endure whenever rightness endures.

by Henry H. Walker

January 15, ‘16