Life's Essence

Life’s Essence

We think we’re so smart

Yet we really don’t even know what life is

Sure you can boil and pipet

You can microscope and experiment

You can hypothesize, theorize

We can discover

Oxygen, carbon dioxide, glucose

Neurons, mesons, electrical processes

DNA that tells us everything

Fourteen complex reactions for every photon

Processing it into vision

A hammer and nail, tapping morse code

Turning it into electricity and then to sound

We know all of this

Yet we can throw it all into a bucket

And not have one nanogram of life in the mix

All the ingredients

Simple, complex

But not one ounce of spirit

All of this material can exist in a corpse

But cannot regenerate itself anymore

So what is life? What is it for?

The scientists and philosophers have their own ways of knowing

But I like the poetic answer:

We don’t know

But it surely looks and sounds and smells and tastes and feels

Like love

8/24/19 kdc