The Immortal Jellyfish Says No to Your Ageist Crap

(Turritopsis dohrnii)


When the world started to sense 
         that dinosaurs were on the decline, 
did the young millennial or Gen-Z creatures 

        begin to look at them as if they weren't 
even there anymore, or have any possibility of 
       a sex life; did they hoot or make jokes 

when one of the soon-to-be-extinct dropped 
        lingo that seemed impossibly hip for someone 
in their age group; did they recommend early 

       retirement or last priority in a vaccine queue 
because, you know, the inevitable was coming 
       anyway? These kinds of dismissal are so 

irritating. It's as if the world forgot that evolution
       isn't only a process of elimination: it's also one
of diversification. There are even organisms

     that rarely die simply because they get 
old. Take the immortal jellyfish, for instance: faced
    with danger or threat, its clear, pulsing tent

dandelion-ringed with 90 stingers might hitch a ride
      on the bottom of a cargo ship; or better yet, press
the reset button to change itself back into a polyp.