Both man and ape and dogs and cats
(My wife)
Contain
The living plaits of life
The fox (my Fido, looking placid)
Contain
Deoxyribonucleic acid
So if we share the twisted strand
In fin and claw and fisted hand,
Why is it man became the best
And forced his ways on all the rest?
Did Fate, sublime and sightless, rule
That man the victor and the fool
Should be the one to seek and find
The source of life and then unwind
The thread that holds both man and ape
Together in their echoed shape?
Or is man’s place upon the spiral,
Far removed from the merely viral,
An unforeseen and hidden twist
Within the intra-galactic mist?
Thus will he reach towards the stars
And slip between time’s hidden bars
To tread upon a distant strand,
Reach out and touch another hand?
And will they strike a common pose
And realise they both arose
From vastly separate primal seas?
Will the final truth be these –
Our universal helices?