Humanist Voices in Verse: “Samsara”

This week’s poem is by Daniel Thomas Moran, TheHumanist.com poetry editor, retired dentist and Boston University Assistant Professor, former Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, New York and the author of seven collections of poetry. He lives in Webster, New Hampshire with his wife, Karen, where he has taken on the role of Unemployed Poet and Anecdotalist.

His recently published collection of poems, A Shed for Wood, has been lauded for its “profound and intelligible poetry” (author Peter Quinn) while Moran is described as “a distinctive American voice which deserves an attentive hearing” (Elizabeth Heywood, Acumen Literary Journal). His website is www.danielthomasmoran.net.

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Samsara

Why hairs once content
upon his head and lush,
Collect each and the next
in the old man’s brush.

The true mystery not
that lamentable losing,
Which renders this fate
so sorely confusing.

Rather why those many
departed dear souls,
Find newborn lives
around his ear holes.

To him who has lived long
there is hardly surprise,
That nature is but rarely
obliging and wise.

He will wonder while wondering
about all of that,
Why Natural Selection did not
evolve him a hat.

— Daniel Thomas Moran