Life with Meaning

Let’s say life invented hunger—
Before those early vesicles,
Chemicals burned as chemicals,

Not as quests to obtain more fuel.
Then, with hunger, life invented
Waste and death, hunger’s byproducts.

We could leave aside the question,
A moment, as to how or why
That transition began. Rocks, fires

Change and consume but don’t set out
To acquire, flense, and set aside.
Let’s just say life invented life.

If a transition that profound
Could happen at all, at least once,
More transitions seem possible,

Probably probable. So, then,
Could it be, however minor
Human differences from other

Closely related species are,
As minor as the differences
Between an organic and an

Inorganic chemistry, or
Between the hunger of life and
The fuel consumption of a fire,

Another transition’s happened
Here among ape lineages,
Not greater cooperation

And not cultural transmission,
Both of which can be found elsewhere
In the tangles of living things,

But the invention of meaning?
Beyond any information—
Not far, but as far as beyond

Any chemicals there is life—
Lies your new hunger for meaning,
To mark waves as significant,

Not just different, but differing
In some small manner that matters.
Imagine skulls as protocells,

Small, unsealed, near-naked packets
Of new, perhaps unfortunate,
Ways of being, lives with meaning.