New poem.

I haven't had as much time to write poetry this year, something I hope to rectify this summer. So here is a poem actually dedicated to the creationists amongst us that they will become able to hear the conversation of life that is taking place all around us. The poem appears with others on my poetry site, Green Fuse Poetry.





(image from http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/jan00/bact0100.htm)

This poem is inspired by new findings that bacteria actually communicate with each other chemically and often this communication may be between very different species of bacteria that are part of a biofilm. For instance see http://www.jci.org/cgi/content/full/112/9/1288.

Also at the time we had a spate of controversy concerning the teaching of evolution and the press coverage of this controversy in Kansas (http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2006/05/on-bulldogs-and-politics-of.html) and the two seeming disconnected ideas - bacteria talking and the evolution controversy just made a certain poetic sense to combine. The result is the poem that follows:

__________________________________________________

Thinking Himself Wise



One long conversation

Me with you and you with the Earth

And the Earth with the Sun

Began with the simplest lines

Joining and breaking words

Without any intention.

The simple begets the complex

And in talking can beget the simple again

Or flow into another conversation,

To, in the ebb and flow of the talk

Become complex

Rising haughty and flush

And deaf to the conversations

In the soil beneath his feet.


Copyright © Paul Decelles May 11, 2006

Other links:

Bacterial Communication and Group Behavior

New Salmonella finding: Inter-bacterial Communication!


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