what is artificial?

What is natural? via Christian Taoism:
What is natural?

Anything free
of human invention.

What is nature?

Everything outside
of human intention.





All artifice is natural to us.
We sprang from flesh pressed, sweating, till it heaved:
till hers and his thrust, shuddered, let loose. Thus
are persons made, is all design conceived.
Ants march in ordered rows down broken ground,
each shouldering a mote of dust, a crumb.
Queen, servants, soldiers shelter in the mound
raised from their labors, eloquent and dumb.
So what if nature's structure's wound so tight
that schemes we build to couch it come unsprung?
Our craftsmanship's a grass-high pile of dust
riddled with tunnels never meant for light
to penetrate, nor words shaped wet on tongues.
We are. We make. We can. We will. We must.