Scientists have found new but tentative
                                                                                             evidence that a faraway world orbiting
                                                                                             another star may be home to life. 
                                                                                                                               – BBC news report

Warm interstellar oceans
cover the sub-Neptune
crust, cradling microbes,
rocking their watery crib.

Our rumored cousins are
eons away as our machine
stops, so Forster wrote;
even that won’t prevent the

coming of more microbes,
the higher power allowing
something new to do what
we older ones could not.

Though we left the gallows
of Nuremberg years ago
in books and nooks of
archives and classrooms,

we are Munch’s nameless
man screaming from his
bridge. We are Sumy and
Bucha, where blue and gold

flags dip low. We are men
in boxers made to bow
before the death of
due process. Democracy

was a fantasy, now truth
is born from the loudest
mic, and you too will
soon be rendered moot.

Such is the DNA of microbes
in warm oceans; mutations
lurking in the murky mud, our
last universal chance is found.