Genietail 08 Immortality Poem by Stewart McKenzie

To live after death,
To have purpose greater than a lifetime,
We don’t need gods,
Invisible beings “out there”
Who hear our sorrows,
Answer our prayers,
And convey our immortal spirits to paradise.
Death’s conqueror already lives within us
In every cell of our bodies.
The genes of the first cell
Give us life
And then pass to our sons and daughters.
They are not immortal certainly,
For the sun will burn out,
But live longer by far than our little flicker.

Of course we may not like this arrangement
It has few of the comforts of religion
Far from being a merciful god
The genes are ruthless,
Caring only for their own survival,
Retaining only success, discarding failure,
And it is they, not we, that will witness the future.