all that groks is God

James Hutton saw "no prospect of an end";
ongoing processes appeared the norm.
Sufficient pressures trained brute stone to bend
as documented in its earthly form.
Charles Darwin sails, and speculates, and looks
for mechanisms that might unify
like what he's reading in Charles Lyell's books
of how the seas sank low, and alps rose high.
No teleology, no foreknown ends
just algorithms chugging day on day;
each novel form upon the last depends.
What's disadvantageous gets swept away.
Enlightenment! From rocks, to apes, to genes
reformulated God as the Machine.

hands down

When cuttlefish can out-perform your pet
in problem-solving, and in self-control
Some want to question which of them gets et
and which enjoys the snug domestic role.
Domestication only fits the few
who understand a social hierarchy
The rest, we're prone to stir fry, bake, or stew;
We're picky in our hospitality.
This season, chordates seem to dominate
'though dinosaurs succumbed, we muddled on
But roll those dice again, a different fate
This time, a mollusc entry might have won.
Contingent evolution favored spines
but something else will rule, another time.

"empires make their own reality"

Lysenko kept his Kremlin patron rapt
and Josef Stalin wanted to believe
duress would make plants mutate and adapt
environment determines more than seeds.
But crops don't care for ideology;
when seasons are too short, or wet, they fail.
His threats can't countermand biology;
farm folk had none to eat, and less for sale.
Now, politicians sneer at Climate Change.
Again, they'd push the scientists aside
in favor of a policy deranged,
forgetting all the million who had died.
When governments defy reality
our world confronts "to be, or not to be".

stochastic progress

Cetaceans galloping beneath the waves
preserve a land-based quadrupedal gait
as upright Man so often still behaves
like ancestors more fit to brachiate.
Old subroutines are cheap to rearrange
as duplicated genes are free to drift.
Among the clunkers, each time we make change,
collectibles are there, for us to sift.
Conserving features more like the sublime
absorbing bound'ries play the longest odds
repeating throughout eons of Deep Time
produced the physiognomy of gods.
Until biologists learned to do math
it took a genius to discern life's path.

aleatory

The swallows jeer; the kestrel barely shrugs
each perfect in its own right as a gem.
Both masters on the wing, one lives on bugs
the other's better armed, and dines on them.
the Class of avians is broad and rich,
from hummingbirds to ponderous emu.
Exquisitely, each fits its proper niche
to masterfully thrive at what they do.
No Telos is implicit in design;
a hundred million years grinds smooth what's rough.
It's only us projecting a Divine
where mindless algorithms are enough.
High-aspect wings evolved in these two, twice.
And Darwin's God achieved it, casting dice.

the sky's the limit

for want of rotors, wings reciprocate
evolving out of parts already known.
The menu's fixed from which to innovate
'though some use exoskeleta, some bone.
The pterosaurs are gone, they've quit the skies.
The niche awaits a predator that soars.
For now, it's only gnats and dragonflies
exploiting lift in ridge, and wave, and cores.
The eagle spreads her pinions to the breeze
and gives herself to rising air's embrace.
Convection holds the liberating keys
for those not built to flap, who love the chase.
The latest innovators on the wing,
chiroptera squeeze in where birds are king.

memories

bacteria use CRISPR with CAS9
to fend off phages that they've seen before
encoded in their own genetic line
remembrances of the ongoing war
a selfish meme, intent to multiply
applies selective pressures on its host
which counters, if it isn't gonna die
a rational response, that needs no ghost
immunity requires a memory
to store a gallery of rogues and find
a complement to an old enemy
a smart riposte need not imply a mind
darwinians show 'how' but never 'why'
Life needs no grand Designer from on High

contingent opportunity

Eukaryotes were swift to radiate
exploiting niches no archaean can
where complex organisms dominate

they dabbled in all sorts of body plan
Precambrian! a world before the jaw
or teeth, but somehow predator and prey
obeyed the evolutionary law
the winners passed their genes down to this day
whole phyla flourished, but were doomed to fail
genetic innovations all laid waste
remembered only in the Burgess shale
uncounted others gone without a trace
'til mitochondria were brought in-house

one can't conceive a grouse, a mouse, a louse

survival of the fittest

Bill Hamilton transformed biology
applying maths where few had tried before
the science he leaves to his progeny
now calculates what had been metaphor
to Darwin's doubters, altruism's odd
but Bill made clear, it's all about the genes
no reason one should be invoking God
to understand what good behaviour means
hypotheses get weighed and falsified
advancing the frontier of what we know
and ignorance is left no place to hide
unless you let some old book tell you so
economists don't toss ideas that crash
but in LifeScience, we throw out the trash

drunkard's walk

the alkaloids a plant makes for defense
were not designed to mess with mammals' minds
receptors that light up are accidents
but fortunes can be made from such chance finds
small-molecule potential space is vast
and screening for a drug's not without cost
what's done responsibly can't be done fast
and even so, a weak lead may go lost
what Darwin's optimized a billion years
a curandero greets as the gods' gift
intoxicants go way past wines and beers
to give our ideation a quick lift
no barrier divides the nose from brain
impeding instant uptake of cocaine

Deep Time

the static cosmos Aristotle dreamed
held realms in sway two thousand years or more
but matters proved less settled than they'd seemed
confronted with a fossil dinosaur
"no vestige of Beginning" Hutton found
implying Time runs deeper than the Flood
his reasoning's as solid as the ground
his rivals' arguments are built on mud
by reproducing differentially
a genotype's by definition fit
to dominate the land, or sky, or sea
until a grandchild somehow out-breeds it
Charles Darwin transformed therapods to ducks
'cause "species" are just snapshots in the flux

good trick

Chiroptera diversity is rich
let feathered dinosaurs rule sun-lit sky
they dominate their own nocturnal niche
the benefits of flapping flight are high
so bats have specialized to stay out late
when no one sees the dinner that one hears
like wee cetaceans, they now navigate
by waves spewed out the nose, and in the ears
the arthropods who took to flying first
and seem determined to feast on my blood
die by the millions to slake bats' fierce thirst
a roost's a blessing in the neighborhood
the hands apes use to do so many things
Charles Darwin reconfigured into wings

wonderful life II

as alien as anything on Earth
a moray has no fingers or thumbs but
to feed its length (if not so much its girth)
laryngeal jaws drag prey down to its gut
and hagfish get along without a jaw
content to wrench a living from the dead
a slimy sort of motile deep-sea craw
but teeth distinguish one end as the head
a further branch displays cephalopods
whose retinas make ours look crude and blind
edentate image of their boneless gods
endowed--if not with joints--with a fine mind
Charles Darwin sketched our baffling fam'ly tree
my cousins don't look anything like me

wonderful life

as alien as anything on Earth
a moray has no fingers or thumbs but
to feed its length (if not so much its girth)
laryngeal jaws drag prey down to its gut
and hagfish get along without a jaw
content to wrench a living from the dead
a slimy sort of motile deep-sea craw
but teeth distinguish one end as the head
a further branch displays cephalopods
whose retinas make ours look crude and blind
edentate image of their limber gods
endowed--if not with joints--with a fine mind
Charles Darwin sketched our wondrous fam'ly tree
my cousins don't look anything like me

contingent

hair follicles' and sweat glands' fates are chained
the same progenitors make either cell
selecting better cooling for big brains
our ancestors got hairlessness as well
four times--at least--the flapping wing's evolved
however inefficient 'tis for flight
the menu's fixed and Darwin merely solved
for something that would work, 'though it's a fight
a screw-propeller wasn't in the cards
for multicellulars like you and me
and Reynold's numbers make the flying hard
flagella only work when they're at sea
this time, a primate triumphed through the odds
another cast of dice....cephalopods?

legion

sympatric speciation makes no sense
for lake Nyassa's cichlid repertoire
were it one pool, gene-mixing's too intense
what's now one lake was myriad before
each drought estranged genes in the sundry ponds
where local challenges chose fittest traits
without invoking any magic wands
constraining fishy choices of a mate
wet years now bridged the archipelago
and reunited cousins to compete
most cycles, net diversity will grow
'though most are merely something new to eat
hydrology's retold in fins and scales
for those with eyes to read the fishes' tales

utility function

'phage Lambda's genome was a trip to map
there's too  much information for the space
until you grasp the genes all overlap
three reading-frames, three meanings for each base
where each mutation must affect three genes
Darwinian selection is impaired
each quantum change is tripled and that means
lethality more often than repair
but evolution needs variety
selecting small improvements from the stack
immobile in thy fearful symmetry
the Red Queen's Race will drop you off the pack
such density in code comes at a cost
improvement opportunities are lost

this too shall pass

Iridium lies heavy on their eyes
who'd dominated the Cretaceous Age
selective pressures on who lives, who dies
reshuffled in one asteroid's brief blaze
for 90 million years, they'd had their run
diversified to niches of all sorts
but who copes best when dust blots out the sun
turned out to be the shrew's hirsute cohorts
the next extinction's wrought by our own hand
in pumping carbon out of fossil pools
to poison atmosphere, and sea, and land
a terraforming spell wielded by fools
who's next is in the laps of fickle gods
perchance intelligent cephalopods

dilettantes

sophisticated parasites don't sting
they lull their hosts while taking what they need
if done right, no one needs to feel a thing
it's gauche to heap insult atop the deed
ascarid worms pay richly for their meal
the lull the T-cells that rampage in Crohn's
immune response kept on a level keel
unless one's raised in an aseptic zone
but what of deerflies and their searing punch?
who court our enmity with every quaff
it's we that pay when they'e enjoying lunch
unless we saturate our clothes with Off!
we've co-evolved, these parasites and we
but some have yet to learn civility          

ceaseless vigilance is the price

where there's success, there'll be a parasite
extracting profit without making goods
nor services to set the books aright
like Adam Smith conjectured that he should
emergent properties don't need a plan
to build economies, or craft an eye
and no watchmaker, be he god or man
needs speculators, nor a tsetse fly
imbalances in Trade make Nations sick
and unredressed, they'll swirl right down the sink
a Trump or Koch is just a loathsome tick
who'd casually drive us all extinct
rent-seekers should be spurned like lice or fleas
incessant RedQueen's Race against disease