Revealed scurvy as a hazard.
It took a few decades before
Ships’ leaderships convinced themselves
Certain fruits and vegetables could
Prevent this. It took centuries
Before a bright Hungarian
Isolated the right enzyme
From lemons in a lab, looking
For the mechanisms of life.
Labeled hexuronic acid,
This now goes by Vitamin C,
But, according to Carl Zimmer,
Its discoverer himself thought
He was so ignorant of how
It functioned, he wanted its name
To be godnose. God has a nose
For these sorts of historical,
Comedic mysteries, God knows.
The mind of God lies within mind,
And, over and over again,
Mind keeps sniffing out new stories,
New explanations for its birth
From a species of ape bodies
That can’t, for instance, make their own
Vitamin C, since ancestry
Among chatty, weeping, handy,
Projectile-crazed bipedal apes
Was never under much pressure
From diets absent some foodstuffs
Holding Vitamin C—until
Mind set to sail the empty seas.
Why did mind make some apes do this?
Why was mind birthed in the first place?
Will mind ever thrive on its own,
Without its beasts, those apes? Godnose.
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