Thus, Every Being, Compounds Kinds

"The concept of a minimal genome, while provocative, is ultimately a dead end."

 

It seems that fleas do not have fleas
Ad infinitum, although those
Who tease apart these things are pleased
To have numbered concentric rings

As small and interdependent
As the shells of walled descendants
Of free-living beings hiding
Inside hosts where they make the most

Of their shelter by some service
To their possessor, while possessed
Themselves by more shells of one-celled
Descendants of dead infectors,

Every parasite dividing
The work of parasitizing,
So that hosts in hosts are not dolls
In dolls at all but wholes that crawl

Along the self-defending length
Of sap-nasty, world trees of life,
Cooperatively digesting
What no one-kindly kinds could digest

Without having first ingested
Vermin as pets and familiars
To help, divide, and simplify.
No wild I is I. Bewildered,

The soul, if you will, is a whole
And a nothing between the walls
Of what sustains it, what it was,
And what could never be at all.