Mysterious Underworld

(What if our whole world view is a mistake?)

I learned today of the invisible underground jungle:

millions of microscopic animals and plants,

competing with each other, eating each other,

some helping and some harming the larger earth –

millions in every grain of soil – and evidence of others

too tiny to yet be discerned. Scientists now (of course!)

are plotting how to harness them into humanity’s service.

How much do these infinitesimal creatures perceive

of our reality? If we can’t see them, can they see us?

Surely we must be too huge to them to be viewable

in our entirety – if at all. Do they get any sense

of some greater agency, barely comprehensible? 

Do they have notions of our existence, much like

the way we postulate deities, angels, even demons?

What if there’s an infinite progression? What if we,

and all the life forms our bare, unmagnified eyes discern, 

and even our vast, swirling galaxies, are in our turn 

similarly minute to some other beings whose existence

we fail to glimpse, let alone comprehend? What if 

it never stops? If that’s the true nature of infinity? 

Are we helping or harming a world we can't imagine? 

Written for the Day 4 Na/GloPoWriMo prompt which asks us to take our title, language or ideas from the book, The Strangest Things in the World. The very first item did it for me!

A hasty subtitle helps me justify also using this for Day 4 of  Poem A Day at Poetic Asides: a mistake poem.

[Revised 21 July 2024]