Family Trees

~ Candidatus Sukunaarchaeum mirabile


Scientists have found a tiny microbe
      which isn't a virus, yet acts like one
because it seemingly has only one purpose: 
      to make more copies of itself by stealing 
what it needs from its host. A picture
      on a slide looks like delicate 
embroidery— peach-colored French knots 
      inside a sac of gauze. Its name points 
to the marvelous, to the kind of mystery reserved
      for gods and ancient fossils. Scientists   
say it straddles the line between life and not-
      life— which is not the same as saying everyone 
who doesn't look like us or talk like us is a kind of 
      non-life, which then might make it possible 
to round them up like animals and pack them off 
      to Uzbekistan or Eswatini. What do labels  
even mean— legal, illegal, alien, documented— if  
      life on earth had to begin somewhere and in all
likelihood we have one universal common ancestor.