Meaning and Agency

Agrobacterium can’t believe its luck

It’s suddenly in a rich medium

Swirling, breathing, growing, dividing

Life is perfect

The conditions are optimum

Food, yum, oxygen, ah, water, slurp

For a day, it goes

For a day, it grows

Then things get dire

The resources have dwindled

It’s overcrowded in here!

There is more waste than sugar anymore!

But then, apocalypse seems to occur

It’s spined down

At a speed meant to turn the world upside down

It’s resuspended in buffer

It’s not that sweet, it’s not that great

But it’s life

Then, unknowingly, it fulfils its purpose

To infect a plant, to transfer a gene

Life is so different, but it feels right

It establishes its home between two cell walls

But a few days later, its very purpose has killed its new home

The expression of the gene was toxic to the leaf

There is no escape, here is the end of the trip

The little agrobacterium’s life, in the grand scheme of things

Meant very little to its divine watchmaker