More of What You Want

Germline-restricted chromosomes
Full of busy copies of genes
That get dumped, mysteriously,

From every cell in the body
Of every songbird, other than
From the songbirds’ sex cells, are life.

So, on the one hand you have song,
The closest parallel to soul
You know in the natural world,

And on the other, you have genes
As part of the reproduction
Of the bodies that sing the songs

That do not contribute to song,
That exist as microscopic
Copies in the dark, arising,

Doing their business to make more
Bodies that one day will make song,
Then tossed out until the next round.

Get your head around this, next time
You hear birds singing, anywhere,
Songs passed parallel to shadows.