Address: The Archaeans, One Cell Creatures

Although most are totally naked

and too scant for even the slightest   

color and although they have no voice   

that I’ve ever heard for cry or song, they are,   

nevertheless, more than mirage, more   

than hallucination, more than falsehood.

They have confronted sulfuric   

boiling black sea bottoms and stayed,   

held on under ten tons of polar ice,   

established themselves in dense salts   

and acids, survived eating metal ions.   

They are more committed than oblivion,   

more prolific than stars.

Far too ancient for scripture, each

one bears in its one cell one text—

the first whit of alpha, the first   

jot of bearing, beneath the riling   

sun the first nourishing of self.   

Too lavish for saints, too trifling   

for baptism, they have existed   

throughout never gaining girth enough   

to hold a firm hope of salvation.

Too meager in heart for compassion,

too lean for tears, less in substance

than sacrifice, not one has ever   

carried a cross anywhere.

And not one of their trillions   

has ever been given a tombstone.   

I’ve never noticed a lessening   

of light in the ceasing of any one   

of them. They are more mutable   

than mere breathing and vanishing,   

more mysterious than resurrection,   

too minimal for death.