IDENTITY

Who said each me is I,
seperate, autonomous?
Not all clone or specialist cell
of some super-organism
- flock, shoal, swarm, hive, city-state
a polyp in a man’o’war,
coral, fungi, sponge or microbe;
A bio-whole greater
than its component parts.

From hunter-gatherer, nomad
to farmer, fisherman
settling en masse, in one base,
building a nest, defining a territory
on the ancient path from group
to self-aware, individual ownership.
Then, colony.

So the billions congregate
networking like mad
constructing new worlds
and synthetic ways of being
compressing dimensions
time and space morphed
Into a singularity;

Us still surviving,
mere and sheer along the organic route
from Eden to Buddhahood.
Or from aborigine to automaton.

Biomimetic principles pervade.
Right angles betray.
We don’t need to invent or discover
a sustainable world:
It already is
(That which we haven’t wreaked…)

The talk is of Gaia
The intelligence of evolution.
Of living, coherent systems or entities
great and small:
Reciprocity, enmeshment
modular design, symbiosis,
anti-fragility, morphic resonance…..

Ah, but surely, we are still
(each and every one!)
seperate, unique, distinct, significant.
Not “part of” any other thing.
Or, at least
different from or superior to
(by dint of the frogspawn in our heads)
all other life-forms.

Surely?