the fires still kindled

Science, not a liberal conspiracy

I descend five miles on a popular trail in the Smokies,

aggressively wearing a black t-shirt with a simple assertion in white on it:

“Science is not a liberal conspiracy.”

many of the hikers up smiled, agreed with it, and me, 

“I like your t-shirt!”

one man from Wisconsin took a picture of it

and seemed to view it, and me, 

as an oasis of open-mindedness 

in the arid wasteland of willful ignorance

many in today’s American seek to create,

I am a child of polio vaccine and penicillin,

of the Moon Landing and the Internet,

I love how minds can explore the heavens,

the mysteries below the atom,

the miracles of evolution, the secrets within DNA,

temperatures and oceans rise,

the weather becomes hyperactive with ridiculous storms and droughts,

and I believe in us, and in science

the we should boldly go forward into revelation,

and figure out what is happening, 

and what we should do about it,

Galileo was threatened with being burned alive

for supporting the idea that all does not revolve around Earth,

it shocks me that the fires do not feel abandoned.

by Henry H. Walker

July 30, ‘18