Denouement

There is a connectedness
of all things in life’s mix
as invisible and inexplicable
as the hidden helix
that dictates
pug or Roman nose
and tells flesh
where a freckle goes.
But some oracles decree
the mix is wholly man’s,
the product of unholy chance
with no design or plans,
that the meaning of it all
(if it's there to be) depends
on their unraveling for us
the knotted odds and ends
of life as if we're cosmic play things--
a tangled mess of Slinky springs
wrapped in time and yo-yo strings
'round marionettes and rubber slings
and long-forgotten building blocks,
connected, yes, but hopelessly alone
in some celestial toy-box.
© Copyright -2008, TK, Patterns of Ink

The French word Denouement is pronounced "dā-nü-mäⁿ." It literally means the "unraveling" or untying, but as a literary term it means "the final outcome of a story," what everyone finds out is true in the end.

When I was a kid, the four of us kept most of our toys in a toy-box that my father made. He'd designed it to look like a treasure box, complete with skull and crossbones. [Seen here.] As my older brothers moved on to other things, the box was opened less and less. But when I was twelve, my little brother Jim was born, and since I was closest to him in age, my interest in toys quickly returned, and the toy-box became important again. In those years of neglect, however, part of it became a tangled mess not unlike the toys depicted in these lines. I pulled out a Slinky and with it came my sling shot, yo-yo, paddle ball, a jump rope and string puppet all wadded up in a snag of toys. Last week, I brought the old toy-box home from Mom's house, and this morning as I was putting it and other things away, I remembered that wad of toys and I wanted to write some lines about how things in life are "connected" and work together in time according to God's plan. Many people believe instead that the world and all the life upon it is the result of random chance. What better way to illustrate these conflicting worldviews than by contrasting the design of DNA with a tangled mess of neglected toys. It's a stretch, I know, but if the poem doesn't make sense, just come back for Chapter 7: "The Virtue of Reality," which I'll try to post by Monday.