the misery of Archaea and ocean floor disposal
Embedded in a meter deep of sediment, at the bottom of the sea,
the ancient thing wags its’ flagella; swimming
through cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur,
surviving, where it should not be able.
They say “the ocean floor per se”
has no water table.
No flushing through; a perfect disposal place
for radioactive waste
to diffuse through dense clay at a limited rate.
The mouth with teeth,
hungry, eat
everything around,
the house, the city, the state, the country
the ocean, the world, the galaxy.
Finally,
swallowing the entire universe,
hungry still it floats, in nothingness,
having no body, no stomach, no heart;
where once it had.
Living in polar seas and making up the plankton,
Extremophile Archaea visit
the cousins in volcanoes and sulphuric acid swamps.
The mighty family gathers to celebrate
3.8 billion years and 20% of the Earth’s biomass!
“You are happily invited” the announcement said,
and greedily accepting,
we work the party and offer
“by the way, we have this new stuff; it might be good to eat,
so with gratitude we’ll send a torpedofull, to snuggle in the seabed.
You can explore, experiment, try it out and take the time to see,
if you folks survive and flourish there as well; besides,
we really have nowhere else to put it and
need to get it out of the house.”