The Reserves

Maybe good monsters, maybe
The best are already there,
Just needing to be expressed,

Like the sequences in yeast
Genomes that almost make sense
But aren’t doing anything,

Yet. One day, some yeast might be
Able to survive freezing,
Or might develop small limbs

Or rudimentary brains,
And where will your beer and bread
Go then? Rice, flies, fish all hide

More genes than you understand,
More genes than they themselves could
As yet begin to express,

But they’re waiting. They’re out there,
Like yeast. They almost make sense.
Life’s been saving up. Life’s been

Storing up variation
For three or four billion years,
In case of a day like this,

When a bigger meteor,
The biggest, burns the surface
Of Earth ash, then freezes it,

Or when one of life’s own toys,
One lineage, goes awry,
Amok, gains the upper hand

Over all other evolved
Lives constraining each other,
And starts killing everything.

Life’s strategies are out there,
Hidden in minor genomes,
Monsters built up in reserve.