TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

Evolution, in its simplest terms, is the process of living things changing over time. Natural selection is part of evolution, as individuals with traits that enhance survival and reproduction are more likely to carry on and pass along their genes. Species that successfully adapt to their environments are more likely to survive, and to produce subsequent generations. 

It’s one thing to think about animals that have evolved to adapt to their habitats: maybe they are camouflaged from predators, or they develop physical traits to help them withstand the elements. But what about humans? We have the ability to live anywhere, thanks to human technologies. We’ve built a society that protects us from natural predators—except for other humans, that is. So what kind of evolution might help us survive in these dangerous times?

I thought about this question, and I didn’t like the answers. I suppose the way to survive in a country that fears difference is to repress difference—to look, and to become, more like the people in charge. The way to survive in a capitalist system that values profits above mutual aid is to become greedier. But surviving like this feels like a de-evolution. It’s the opposite of progress.

Today’s poem has me thinking about evolution and natural selection in a different way. It has me thinking about our survival.

Elephants Born Without Tusks
by Alison C. Rollins

The Washington Post says that green burials are
on the rise, as baby boomers plan for their future

their graves marked with sprouting mushrooms
little kneecaps crawling up from the dirt’s skin

like Michael Brown decomposing into the concrete
ending as natural product of the environment.

Elephants are now being born without tusks
their genetics having studied the black market

DNA a spiral ladder carefully carved
from wooden teeth of Founding Fathers.

Never let a chromosome speak for you, they will
only tell a myth—an ode to the survival of the fittest.

Peppered moths are used to teach natural selection
their changes in color an instance of evolution.

Birds unable to see dark moths on soot covered trees.
The number of blacks always rising with industry.

Life is the process of erosion, an inevitable wearing down 
of the enamel. The gums posing the threat of disease.

On most websites they suggest biodegrading 
choosing a coffin made from pine or wicker.

The man in the paper said, I want to be part of a tree,
be part of a flower—go back to being part of the Earth.

I imagined my Mother then, her short-cropped hair
like freshly cut grass, immune to the pains of mowing.

The Natural Burial Guide for Turning Yourself into a 
Forest  sits waiting in my Amazon shopping cart.

Pink salmon have now evolved to migrate earlier
I am familiar with this type of Middle Passage

a loved one watching you move on without a trace
the living inheriting an ocean of time

the sun rewiring the water-damaged insides
cells desiring to go back from where they came

\\ certain strands of 
your kind now extinct.

“Elephants Born Without Tusks" by Alison C. Rollins from LIBRARY OF SMALL CATASTROPHES © 2019 Alison C. Rollins. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.