A Poem for the Earth
By Faith Monahan
A Poem for the Earth
Her axis, strong. Her tilt, a few degrees.Life evolves by her patient solar turns,
Her species have no afterlives, no reprise.
Mountains, deserts, birds singing in our trees,
Seas blue green, coral bones, our moon churns,
Her axis strong. Her tilt a few degrees.
The migrating monarchs moving by breeze,
Thermophile microbes who know no burns,
Her species have no afterlives, no reprise.
Barren Mars of War, Beautiful Venus,
No seasons reflect in their oaks and ferns,
Her axis strong. Her tilt a few degrees.
We lick her ice caps until they unfreeze,
Ignore the stop signs that read “no returns,”
Her species have no afterlives, no reprise.
We have CRISPR, DNA, and disease,
In her body, we bury ash and urns,
Her axis strong. Fevers by two degrees,
Her species have no afterlives, no reprise.
Reflection
In pictures of the earth’s landscape, so much diversity can be found. Every corner of the earth appears different. The Moon, Mars, and Venus look the same all over, but earth has a beautiful amount of life.The alphabetic code of AGCT can spell more words than we can name, and evolution brought us to the environment we know. Whether in the Marianas trench or the Sahara, life exists. When a species adapts to a place, the environment shapes itself in return, and this cannot be plagiarized. Life may come again, but due the number of combinations of DNA, life can never evolve in the same exact way twice. The DNA variations of life are unique and invaluable. A species may evolve to be similar but never identical, like snowflakes. Coevolution, convergent evolution, and parallel evolution all appear as magic to me. The amount of beauty in the uniqueness, specificity, and diversity due to evolution is insurmountable. Climate change threatens our societies, but it also threatens the diversity of nature. Life may survive it through resilience, but the numerous expressions of DNA found in endangered species will not.
I have taken biology since middle school, but the beauty of life and evolution only struck me recently thanks to my habit of binge-watching Netflix documentaries. In the past 20 years, scientists have developed the ground-breaking technology of CRISPR: clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. With this advancement, the whole meaning of life opens up. Its strands unravel, quite literally. CRISPR allows DNA to be inserted into a cell, changing its pattern, and the field of genetic engineering will change exponentially in our lifetime. CRISPR may cure many diseases and change lives, but these changes could have irreversible effects on ecology and ethics for better and for worse.
This poem follows the structure of a villanelle which consists of five tercets followed by one quatrain. The structure follows an ABA rhyme scheme for each stanza, so the same two rhymes occur throughout the entire poem (“degrees” and “turns”). The first and third lines of the first stanza are the refrains, so they repeat throughout the poem in a specific pattern (“Her axis, strong. Her tilt, a few degrees,” and, “Her species have no afterlives, no reprise”). The earth turning around the sun and the simultaneous resilience, evolution, and temporality of life and species parallel the repetition of these lines. I have attempted this structure before, but I have never gotten far with it until now. Traditionally, villanelles contained pastoral themes such as rustic landscapes. As this poem contains images of the earth’s landscape and nature, the themes build off this structure’s history.
Netflix documentary recommendations: Unnatural Selection, Human Nature, and My Octopus Teacher.