Extremophile
How many miles into the earth would we have to dig to find true stillness, free from all taint of life? Some bacteria can thrive solely on the energy from radioactive decay, know nothing of oxygen, & persist as a single-species ecosystem, alone in their subterranean cosmos. We’ve come to learn a full half of the total mass of life on earth dwells underground or beneath the ocean floor. So thoroughly have we infected the planet, it might never be rid of us, the poor thing, burdened as it is with a barren mate that remains untainted by its contagion, circling at a safe distance & summoning with a regular tug that we like to think is somehow meant for us.
It’s always a fun challenge to try to work such utterly geeky material into a poem. The bacteria mentioned is Desulforudis audaxviator — see “Real Life Journey To The Center Of The Earth Finds First Ecosystem With A Single Species” in Science 2.0. (Be sure to click on the photo if you can’t read the inscription on the gravestone.)