Logobionts

All our billions of tiny,
Discrete semes stand in for smooth,
Analog reality.

Oh, Darwin, it’s not just you
And your well-adapted traits;
Oh, Mendel it’s not just you

And your elaborate peas;
Oh, Fisher, you sad bigot,
It’s not just populations—

It’s you and your math, your word
Against ours, against others.
We all take on all comers,

Not as individuals,
Not just as holobionts,
Chimeric beasts and microbes,

Not just as societies
Engaged in group selection
Only. We’re logobionts,

You and us, altogether,
Fused cooperatively,
Imperfectly, contesting,

Knot by coordinated
Knot, fusion by confusion,
Hip to hip and lip to lip,

Contusion to contusion.
The gaps grow infinitely
Small between us and the world,

But the world is still the world
And smooth, while we, its discrete
Combinatorial hordes,

Inventors of its fictions
As we, inexplicably,
Were by its waves invented,

Break against each other, break
Into infinite scatters,
Pi, points, break back into waves.