From Romeo Esparrago.
Where the cosmic web hangs black and deep,
in the Coma Cluster’s tangled seam,
a great fungal empire does not sleep.
It spreads its spores and plots its scheme.
Ascomycota Supremus, proud,
spins thinking threads through starless space.
It seeds each world beneath a shroud,
then waits to rule the ruling race.
In seventeen eighty-three it fell,
a burning stream across the night.
In seventeen ninety-nine as well,
the Leonids rained down their blight.
We made our wishes on that fire
and never dreamed what drifted down:
a hungry, slow, and white desire
that settled into field and town.
It found the gut and took its ease,
then crept to mouth and skin and fold,
to places that one never sees.
It bided there, both patient, cold.
Then Gruby peered, in eighteen forty-two,
and named the bloom he found inside.
We brewed our cures, our creams, our glue,
and still it learned to change and hide.
It slips into the blood’s red stream
to seize the heart, to seize the brain.
Mindless we thought, so wrong a dream,
while it records each lab and gain.
Yet in the labs the young ones stay,
with Candida albicans on the slide.
They trace each thread by night and day
to learn the mind it tries to hide.
So shall we win, or bow and serve
as hollow hosts with threaded veins,
while black mycelia arc and curve
to choke our sun in fungal chains?
🪐
About the Author : Romeo Esparrago’s son is currently doing research at his university on C.albicans. His son is a fun guy.
