Billions of False Starts

Every summer I root for all those little maple trees
        growing in the gutter of my front roof wishing
        them well though I know they are doomed,

And every summer I vow to clean out the many years
        of accumulated leaves that now provide such
        hopeful soil for the maple seeds

But after the little trees die from the many inadequacies
        of their tiny habitat I forget about them and their soil.

So much of creation seems mass produced,

Like the baby chicks that are processed on assembly
        lines for human consumption, or like rabbits that
        are so optimally constructed to serve the needs
        of a diversity of predators.

So useful they are that one almost expects God to patent them.

Rabbits striving to escape their meaning in the great
        hierarchy of eating stand utterly still as their
        first defense in the face of danger,

Like frozen dinners.

God is infinitely careless with His sperm

I so much wanted to stand face to face with this
        mystery of things that I took matters into my
        own hands after a manner of speaking and
        produced a sample.

Putting them on a slide I studied them 400 times enlarged
        and sure enough they were just like tadpoles.

So many there were and so infused with the energy
        of an absurd hope,

I felt pity for them as I did for the rabbits and chicks
        and the little trees and for real tadpoles too
        for that matter who are not doing so well these days,

And perhaps this Earth whose untimely demise we
        are already grieving is but one sperm among billions
        in our galaxy alone though that does seem a waste.

And I felt admiration too.

But even should they have seen the Great Eye peering
        down from the sky and prayed to me what
        could I have done?

I did not know that some would be so much bigger than others.

Do the smaller ones stand a chance?

And were I a race horse of a sperm faster than all the others,

A great Seabiscuit in this teaspoon world able to gallop in
        my wiggly sort of way to the finish line ahead
        of all the others to find waiting for me there
        a shapely egg anxious to enfold me in her
        semi-permeable embrace,

Would I have wanted to accept her invitation and become
        like that one seed in a million or billion that
        becomes a maple tree,

Leaving all my peers to starve on the unyielding ground,
        or rotting in the gutters?

Would I share the huge indifference of the Creator
        for all His billions of failed starts?

At some point I must have said,

Why yes.

Yes.

Of course.