Poem: ‘The First Bite’ | Scientific American

Poem: ‘The First Bite’

By Gillian Neimark

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Edited by Dava Sobel

It’s been a billion years since blue inexperienced algae sequined
lakes and—like a python swallowing a pig—a protist ate one.
I see that pale hunter orbiting gloomy coves
tail whipping mellow waters, then guzzling a necklace
of cyanobacteria—
consciousness tuned solely
to that earthen, beautiful style
not understanding that algae eat daylight
and pluck electrical arcs from water
exhaling lengthy tongues of odorless oxygen
that suffocate anaerobes throughout this earth.
It waits for its meal to die.
However one inexperienced bloom burns on
inside, spits flame, survives.
Night time ebbs, day breaks
And now the protist feels pregnant
with a tiny solar god.
Collectively they tumble over the ocean
drunk with the liquors of sunshine
every attempting to cough up the opposite
to be alone once more and simply float sated.
Lots of of thousands and thousands of years of wrestling
till the captive, now a chloroplast
filled with pigments,
is totally fashioned
and engineers a biosphere:
A backyard within the east, simply shy of Eden
an apple, one other reckless chunk, exile
throughout the jeweled earth