more than mirage

.

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.


—Pattiann Rogers
Address: The Archaeans, One Cell Creatures

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