Reading about Watching Things Grow

Gigantic sequences reside
Inside a group of archaea,

Separate from the hosts’ genomes,
In linear, not circular

Compositions, longer even
Than large bacteriophages.

Nobody knows quite what they are,
Yet, nor what their base pairs code for.

Code for—interesting concept.
Code, system of laws, books of wood,

Linear, lengthy compositions
Packed in tightly as possible,

And for, in front of, in sight of,
For whose benefit, what purpose?

There’s always something growing down
There in Earth’s thin cortex of ground,

Something new for you to dig up
And decode, decide to declare

For the purpose of this or that.
But think of those poor archaea

Congested with such elements
A third the size of their genomes,

Copying themselves mindlessly,
Or mindfully, which would be worse,

Coding repetitively for
God knows what God knows what God knows—