Console Yourself. You’re a Wonderful Life.

Everything that’s known alive
Lives to seek out what it likes,
And what it likes rewards it

Often enough with more life
For its own or offspring cells.
Well. What else is new, Sparky?

It’s dark outside. What you like
Is of dubious value,
True, but look at it this way,

If you like—you also look
Like just the thing other lives
Seek out to extract more life.

You’re a service—not only
To the ominous monsters
Macro and microscopic

Who would as soon devour you
As thrill to the smell of you,
But to all your symbiotes

And mutualists, maybe
Even your domesticates—
You! Wonderful life they like.