It’s a Spherical Thing

Cooperation starts small.
Bacteria form snow globes
Of themselves in structured rings,

Communities, if you like,
And teams can go smaller yet.
What is a cell with a wall

If not cooperation
Between many molecules
To ingest, grow, waste, and split,

Their dances elaborate
As any building project,
And then some? Your trick

Wasn’t to cooperate
But to add a wobbly ring
Around older forms of this,

And then a ring around that,
And then a ring around that.
Your outer rings are fragile,

Shatter easily, collapse
As bubbles. The frailest form
Of cooperation’s you.

Don’t be too hard on yourselves.
You’re just glimmers of great spheres,
Delicate and weird, new here.