Ode to Life
A poem, dedicated to the miracle that is Life on Earth
Here’s something different, while I work on the next piece – a 12-stanza ode to the miracle of life on Earth, tracing its origins from the universe’s formation through to us, here in the present day.
For context, I was challenged to write the poem by a friend at my Toastmasters public speaking club1, and so the poem has been designed to be spoken out loud.
I hope you enjoy.
Ode to Life
By Nicholas Moore
Fourteen billion years ago the universe began,
Formlessness becoming form with heavenly élan;
This nascent reality caused forces to coalesce
And in the dark void of space, hydrogen compressed
And fused into stars – the forges of creation –
Seeding the firmament with the chemical foundation
Of life!
Stars shine bright with incredible magnitude –
No wonder our ancestors offered their gratitude
And worshipped the Sun in its life-giving glory,
But to look to the sky is to miss half the story,
For beneath our very feet lies an almighty crucible –
The young Earth created something irreproducible:
Life!
Vast oceans of water swallowed the ground
And eruptions of magma made nutrients abound;
While water and carbon dioxide in the air
Blocked out the Sun’s fatal ultraviolet glare,
A core made of iron forged in an ancient star’s heart
Spun a magnetic field which shielded the start
Of life!
What took place in those oceans was truly a miracle –
The creation of an entity entirely original;
Earth’s nurturing shelter from the sterile abyss
Gave birth to the first life-form to ever exist –
An unprecedented leap, like never before,
A chemical reaction had become something more:
Life!
Proteins and sugars, carbon-based chemistry,
RNA strands that replicate endlessly;
Errors can occur in genetic transmission
And limited resources drive competition
With losers condemned to eternal damnation
While winners pass genes to the next generation
Of life!
Competition and trial and error and time –
A recipe for emergence of beings sublime;
One organism crafted a molecular shell
To hoard all its resources inside a cell –
This seminal strategy was so foundational,
It proved to be utterly transformational
For life!
Cyanobacteria turned light into food,
Successfully forming a great multitude,
Excreting oxygen that poisoned the skies
Until oxidising organisms capitalised
And single-celled lifeforms learned collaboration
In a multicellular transfiguration
Of life!
Specialisation into explicit roles
Allows parts of the body to achieve precise goals
Like nerves that react to external effects
Granting animals the power to self-direct –
Genesis of consciousness, blessed epiphany!
Awareness of reality, of the infinite polyphony
Of life!
A four-billion-year story of biological drive,
Predators, prey, the fight to survive;
Leaving the oceans to colonise the land
The great tree of life continued to expand;
Plants evolved flowers for insects to pollinate
A partnership enabling both groups to dominate
Life!
Our ancestors fortuned from heaven-born luck
When the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs struck,
Emerging from burrows to conquer each terrain
From deserts to snow, mammals still reign,
With nurturing instincts and milk to nourish
Providing foundations for children to flourish
In life!
Since humans diverged from our chimpanzee brothers
We learned to share complex ideas with each other,
Developed stone tools, wielded weapons and fire,
Gazed up at the moon and dreamed ever higher,
Domesticated animals and cultivated crops,
Shaped our environment and rose to the top
Of life!
In our everyday lives we so often lose sight
Of this chain of events stretching back to first light;
Every bird, every flower, every monument of man
Is a shrine to remind us that life first began
Right here on Earth in a blessing most fateful,
So, each day I wake I am reverently grateful
For life!
Toastmasters – which I contend is terribly named – is a volunteer-run franchised set of public speaking clubs (and has nothing to do with learning how to be a Toastmaster or Master of Ceremonies). It’s a great way to get over your stage fright and polish your public speaking skills, or develop leadership skills. You can find out more here: https://www.toastmasters.org