A Howl for the Chemotrophs

I saw the best microbes of my generation thriving in darkness,
chemical-hungry, dragging redox chains through lightless abysses,
burning for the ancient geothermal pulse,
who pulsed in sulfur vents and methane seeps,
chewing hydrogen’s raw spark where no sun dares to creep,
who bared their enzymes in the deep-sea’s crush,
syllables of life unlit, unshackled from the star’s tyrannical glow!

Holy! Holy! Holy!
The crust’s molten heart! The vent’s black plume!
Holy the archaea weaving life from iron’s rust!
Holy the bacteria gnawing ammonia’s bitter edge!
Holy the tube worms swaying blind in the abyss,
their guts a cathedral of chemosynthetic fire!

I saw them, astrobiology’s wild prophets,
screaming Europa’s name, her ice-locked seas a hymn,
Enceladus spitting hydrogen truths,
Titan’s methane lakes whispering alien psalms,
who danced in Mars’ dead veins,
sucking secrets from basalt’s cold embrace,
who mocked the habitable zone’s smug borders,
roaring life’s anthem where stars are rumors,
rogue planets cradling chemical cradles in their stone wombs!

The cosmos yawls open—
no photon needed, no chlorophyll crutch!
Life’s root is chaos, a redox riot,
alkaline vents spitting proton prayers,
mineral scaffolds where molecules fuck and fuse,
abiogenesis howling in the void’s throat,
not sun, but sulfur! Not light, but disequilibrium’s jagged pulse!

I saw them, the unseen,
in Movile’s cave, sulfur gods carving ecosystems from gloom,
in subsurface pores, microbes older than mountains,
their hunger a manifesto,
their metabolism a middle finger to the electromagnetic lie!
Who screamed: We are! We are!
In the black, we are,
where no spectrum reigns,
where energy’s raw and jagged,
where life’s first syllable was a chemical snarl!

Holy! Holy! Holy!
The gradient’s spark! The vent’s roar!
Holy the crust’s slow churn, birthing worlds unstarred!
Holy the moons unlit, their oceans chanting possibility!
Holy the exoplanets, volcanic and defiant,
spitting life’s dare into the galaxy’s face!

They howl still, the chemotrophs,
in Earth’s gut, in the cosmos’ folds,
their hunger a map to the unthought,
their breath a clue to the unasked—
What lives where no light falls?
What begins where no star sees?
Everything! Everything!
The universe is a vent,
and life’s a howl that needs no sun to sing!