Cambrian Two

In evolutionary terms,
It can’t be such a promising
Pattern—a genus rapidly
Pruned of its few species.

But that’s the story of bipeds
For the past million years or so,
Dwindling from a modest handful
Of species to one example,

Which, hilariously, has both
Found out about its lost cousins
And exploded around the world
In monophyletic triumph.

Can numbers prevent extinction?
Ask the passenger pigeon, or,
Better yet, ask a trilobite.
Still, those are faint comparisons.

How about mitochondria?
The secret of their long success
Was becoming permanently
Enmeshed in nucleated cells.

Those cells diversified wildly,
And multicellularity
Transformed the possibilities
For what lives could be lived on Earth.

The mitochondria followed
Their lineages, numerose
In each individual cell
But whittled down, simplified, spare,

Much the same mitochondria
In any species, anywhere—
There’s one option not extinction.
Maybe people will continue

Not as a free-living species
But enablers for evolving
Cultures of massive artifice
To blossom, small prerequisites.