Watchers

Photographed from the moon, [the Earth] seems to be a kind of organism. It is plainly in the process of developing, like an enormous embryo. It is, for all its stupendous size and the numberless units of its life forms, coherent. Every tissue is linked for its viability to every other tissue.

LEWIS THOMAS, The Medusa and the Snail

    And so I'm linked to you 
like cells within a growing embryo, 
    and you are linked to me, 
and we, together, linked to everyone 
  as watchers from the moon can see. 

The patient watchers from the moon can tell 
  what currents pushing through the tide 
direct vast spawnings from the swaying deep, 
    and what ancestral pathways 
through the buoyant air wedged wild geese keep

    inscribed within their brains 
that safely store stupendous images—
  range after range of mountain snow, 
    and shadowed woodland green, 
blue sky reflected in blue sea below.

  Although they see all parts as one, 
wholly dependent and yet numberless, 
    the watchers from the moon 
surmise some flaw may be developing, 
    some rampant cells may soon

outgrow the rest, presuming that their lives 
    were all life meant. And yet 
for now, the watchers still are full 
    of admiration, awe; 
each tissue seems connected, viable—

    like you and me, together, 
linked as one with our increasing kind, 
  taking dominion everywhere, 
now cultivating forests, now the seas, 
now blasting even through the air.

    The membrane of the sky 
holds in accumulated oxygen, 
  welcomes the visible, good light, 
protects from lethal ultraviolet, 
    and guards against the flight

  of random meteors that burn out, 
harmless at the edge of our home space, as if 
    by miracle, although 
just friction from our atmosphere is what 
  the watchers from the moon all know

  keeps us alive and linked 
each to the other, each to the sunlit cycles 
  of exhaling plants and trees. 
For pollination, fruits and flowers have 
  warm winds and their obliging bees;

forests renew themselves from their decay, 
  aided by intermittent rain; 
and plankton, drifting in the sun to breed, 
  provide the herring and the whale 
    with all the food they need

  to keep seasonal life alive 
    in its appointed place—
as useful excrement replenishes 
  carbon dioxide, precious salt, 
to fecundate the swaying sea which says:

    Coherence is the law 
all must obey, although the watchers see 
  certain relentless cells below, 
dividing, and divided from the rest, 
  forming a monster embryo.