There is, or once upon a time, will be,

deep in a dark primordial sea,

inside an ageing corpse dissolving,

some tiny microbes, just evolving;

though dead things not their usual fare,

this was the last food anywhere

and sensing it would soon be rotten,

their table manners were forgotten.

Too soon their ghastly meal runs out

and hunger makes them look about,

but finding only one another,

each turns around and eats its brother:

when binary fission sub-divides 'em,

they split in two and find beside 'em

their identical twin brothers,

with appetites like one another's.

The problem now, when split in two,

is just who gets to dine on who?

Should they flee, or fight and stay?

To be a hunter or be prey?

Both predators and runaways

choose their paths in different ways:

the prey choose finding fresh food sources;

while hunters choose who their next course is.

Food for prey? A vexing question,

is solved by hunter's indigestion:

inside each hunter's gut is sorted

food from waste to be aborted,

while prey, the only other species,

make do by chewing hunter faeces;

while hunters find their prey nutritious,

the prey find hunter poo delicious.

Both prey and hunters find solutions

and sub-divide through evolution's

wish to see air, land and seas

filled with fish and birds and trees.

Then one sad day is born a beast

that brings a terror to the feast:

all lifekind learns to fear the same

this monster with its larger brain.

Too soon the beast is everywhere

polluting land and sea and air;

in its own filth this creature thrives

till little but its kind survives

and when at last its food runs out

its hunger makes it look about

but finding little there to savour,

it turns around and eats its neighbour.

It slaughters till eventually,

beside a vast polluted sea,

the last beast, starving, sees off shore

a putrid, floating apple core.

With greed it gulps the apple down,

then sinks beneath the waves to drown,

its gut allowing to survive

the only creatures left alive.

The putrid apple core is rife,

with tiny microscopic life... So then:

There is, or once upon a time, will be,

deep in a dark primordial sea,

inside an ageing corpse dissolving,

some tiny microbes, just evolving...