Puttering among his barnacles (so many to keep!)
                He pondered more than the shells
Like them, once free swimming, but now firmly fixed.
                Yes, in a fix,
                not evolving, his own shell covering the dark comprehension.
"Stomach troubles." More like stagnant wells
                of apprehension.

Ah! What he had gradually realized as a rover…
He knew there would be hell to pay
                when natural selection naturally had its say.
Thus ten years' Darwin dammed. Delay, delay, delay.

Say, who could blame the former Unitarian?
"Blasphemy, anathema, vulgar contrarian!"
He could hear them in his troubled sleep.

Then the shocked shell shattered.
                (After all, what really mattered?)
The thunderclap of Wallace woke the deep
                somnolence, dragging truth into the light.
A long, long night
               was over.

Author's Note:

I got inspired to write this poem while reading that amazing book by Homer Smith, Man and His Gods; he wrote a brief biographic sketch of Darwin and I was once again made grateful that Darwin was both brilliant and heroic.

As you know, November brings the sesquicentennial of the publishing of his earthshaking On the Origin of Species.

--Adrienne Morris