Mighty Coil
Little coil of chemistry
That conducts my life,
Convoluting through the ages
Conjugating man and wife.
Rungs upon a ladder
Of our family tree,
Mutating and growing
Into great complexity.
You tell the whole story
Of life under this sky;
Within your base structure
Is the tale of you and I.
I wish I could understand
How you came to be.
Perhaps time will unravel
You great mystery.
A simple code of four
Spells out your majesty;
So eloquently spelt –
What was, is and will be.
Opher 30.5.2016
Mighty Coil
I was lying in bed this morning on my birthday thinking about age, life and the future. Time passes.
The grandchildren are on their way with my daughter. They will be here shortly to help me celebrate. They are the future as I move into the past.
The real celebration is the fact that they share my DNA – we all do. Resounding down through the ages, from the very first cell, and on into the distant future.
Humans might not last long but DNA is shared with all life; we are all family.
Those four bases spell out a code that contains our whole history, eloquently recorded for a long time to come.
No life is more evolved than any other. We come from the same cell. We have lived the same length.
I tried to capture the convolutions of the DNA molecule with its rungs like a ladder and four base code that contains a wealth of information. Our whole past is written there. I used the word base in both meaning. We are a base species. But we are not the culmination. M<ore is to come. Maybe the future forms of life will evolve to be something greater than we have managed. We are a disappointment – we promised so much.
I do not pretend to understand how DNA originated or incorporated into that first mother cell. Life is mystery. But humans are inquisitive and great at problem solving. Maybe one day we will know (if we survive long enough).
So on this birthday I celebrate life in all its forms and will drink a toast to the wonders of DNA – the wonder chemical that has given us all we are.
Here’s to you DNA and all your twists and turns! The story isn’t over yet!