By Phillip Schultz

Well, here we are again,
on our treadmills,
deep within a hospital’s cardiac center,
two fellow rehabbers,
accountants I believe,
on either side of me,
watching Fox News while discussing
tax-free Caribbean vacations,
organized, I imagine, by Dante.
My silence, I assume they assume,
implies equal pleasure in seeing
noisy ideas being crucified.
My TV, tuned to the History Channel
by a previous tenant, shows
a jubilant Darwin wandering curiously
among incurious tortoises,
who, apparently, have no idea
what being naturally selected means,
other than, perhaps, having somehow adapted
to their new and surprising
personalities. In any case,
the surrounding clamor is triumphant,
we’re all still here, after all,
on the treadmill of evolution,
somewhere north of extinction,
sweating happily, contemplating
our complex, peculiar strivings
toward the rewards of indefatigability,
one dogged assumption, cranky idea,
and tax-free holiday at a time.

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Philip Schultz’s poetry collection, Failure, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008; his memoir, Comforts of the Abyss, came out in 2022. His new collection, Enormous Morning, will appear in 2026. He is founder and director of The Writers Studio.