Caves Show Us This Is Not the Case

There’s something to be said
For contingency—all
The weird ways the world takes—

And no thing’s the same twice.
Don’t underestimate,
However, the power

Of long-term direction,
The ways in which contexts
Similar to contexts

Shape similar outcomes.
It feels like, if you could
Start all over again,

Everything would come out
Differently and, yes,
It would, but not so much.

Hundreds of times, in caves
With no connections, lives
Have blundered in and stayed

Enough generations
To change into new things,
Wonderful creatures, strange,

And each unique, and yet,
Every time, colorless,
Every one of them blind.