(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]