Convulsion That Questions Itself

Humans have been an accelerant,
Like the ability to digest
Oxygen, like the acquisition
Of teeth and then armor against teeth.

No, that’s not quite it. For a long time,
A long time at least among humans,
Humans don’t seem to have been doing
Terribly revolutionary

Things—a bit of complex signaling,
Occasionally fashioning tools,
Small and mobile social groups of kin,
A tendency to wander around—

Nothing life hadn’t tried out before,
At a number of sizes and scales,
And would go right on tinkering with.
Something caught fire, though, and everything

Around it, including the humans
Who started it, were caught up in flames.
It’s not the total amount of change
Wrought by this outbreak of one species

But the way it’s accelerating,
And the questions it’s asking itself—
Is fire even the right metaphor
For what’s going on here, since fire will

Burn through its fuel? Would it be better
To think of this as awakening,
Quickening, the convulsion of life
Becoming something it’s never been?