Time was, we had to be cautious
since the dead world could quicken
and anything was always inexplicably
about to become an animal:
bare dirt birthed worms,
toads sprang full-blown from muck,
and mice could breed
from a stale loaf kept in a quiet cupboard.

We now know that’s not the way of it:
life’s not spontaneous,
but always it’s the product of
some effortful seed
and some intent or accident of sperm;
life breeds life, and furiously
goes on living.

Not magic but poetry.

Image: this toad’s for you by Tom Woodward, published under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) license.

Imaginary gardens with real toads in them…