Really? I thought they pre-selected trees to munch down that would spell -Crawl- when they were finished.

That's a moot argument and not about reality. For one, plenty of purposeful people living now are not reproducing. For two, if your answer to the previous sentence is humans (and their organs) came into existence for purposes of reproduction, please ask yourself if you believe organisms have a purpose besides the one they give themselves at any moment, who or what gave them that purpose then, and why you aren't in church this Sunday morning? To wit, reproduction isn't necessary to the continuation of the species for 99.9999% of human beings or flowers. How can you claim reproduction is still a purpose? To even more wit, it's all kind of backwards anyways: All existing species survived by reproduction, so you say that the purpose of existing species is survival by reproduction. If a species didn't reproduce or, consequently, survive, would you say that it failed at its purpose or that it excelled at a totally different purpose, like going extinct?

Surely beavers don't look for randomness or design in dams or much of anything else. Yes, if you asked a beaver what it thought about its dam, it'd probably rock back on its heels a bit and say something like 'Yep, looks good to me.' But if he did, you'd probably want to get your head checked.

1) Where does the siding in the poem come from. At least in the South, siding is an actual material made from wood or more commonly plastic, and not just "the side of something", as you seem to have it. 2) What distinction are you making between flat and plum in the comment above? (PS-Congratulations on bringing plum back into the mix! Good one!)

Your comment about other universes spread over space and time makes me think this poem could stand a metaphor of jam spread over an old man's creased buttocks. Judging from the rest of the comments on this poem, everyone agrees. PS-I was considering only organic evolution, or the evolution of species by competition, natural selection, and so on. Apparently there's a whole other evolution, inorganic evolution, dealing with the creation of the physical universe, that I had no idea about. My unprepared response is going to be that considering human or organic evolution as part of the same process of inorganic evolution that resulted in the creation of galaxies and such from unorganized matter is kind of silly. If this ends with me having to go through the bother of a prepared response, I'm going to shoot myself.

I grew up in Charlotte but went to a private school full of northern expatriates almost the whole time. I didn't learn about the word y'all until 10th grade, and then I thought it was cute. I actually STILL think the Civil War is over.

Not a pretty picture but life can be a bitch sometimes. Some very good lines and I like the narrative form you chose.

Let's see. 2 plus 1 is only 3. You're still in trouble.