The Mole in the Mole
Is mitochondria a parasite
That burrowed-down so deep,
That it had to shed its shell, its genes,
And then its very self, to creep ?
Yet at that time, the world was set alight
By plagues of oxygen,
That poisoned all these slow machines
And killing ninety-nine in ten.
But mitochondria had a superpower !
It ate-up all the gas,
And got so greedy gorging ATP
It spat some out as frass.
It took a fair few million years to flower,
To slowly shrink and dig –
And become the ghost in all life we can see,
All life that grew-up big…
