November 19, 2024
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Poem: ‘The First Bite’
Science in meter and verse
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Directed by Dava Sobel
It’s been billions of years since the blue green algae began to sparkle
the lake and—like a python devours a pig—he was eaten by a protist.
I see that pale hunter walking around the gloomy coves
tail wagging the sweet water, then rubbing the collar
cyanobacteria—
only attuned consciousness
that great earthy taste
not knowing that algae eat sunlight
and pull the electric arcs out of the water
breathing long tongues of odorless oxygen
which suffocate the anaerobes on this earth.
He waits for his meal to die.
But a green flower burns
inside, it burns, it survives.
Night jumps, day breaks
And now the protist feels pregnant
with a small sun god.
Together they fall over the ocean
drunk with the liquors of light
each trying to cough up the other
to be alone again and float sated.
Hundreds of millions of years of struggle
until captivity, now the chloroplast
packed with pigment,
it is completely complete
and they make a biosphere:
A garden in the east, not far from Eden
an apple, another careless bite, banishment
across the gems of the land
