Double Stranded

G. Carlson

Imagine time is like a strand
of DNA being assembled, the letters of a unique alphabet
added from left to right, and once created a chemical substance in its own right,
all of it existing at once and even occasionally being unwound, base pairs
flying off unseen into the wet cellular abyss, history erased and
space divided and everything replayed again, neither sister
aware of the replication.

And maybe realities mingle and things are rearranged,
new possibilities born, or a mistake is made
and mutated moments must be phagocytosed in fire.
But then a day comes when error is beneficial
Holy, a new universe is created and now
it can walk on land and another will someday fly.

Imagine, perhaps for comfort, that birth and fear
wonder and childhood and egotism
service and adulthood and violence
wisdom and death are double stranded,
supercoiled together tightly and sometimes
touching, white stringy bundles endlessly copied,
revisions of each day decoded in distant bodies.

And the fittest timelines persist, arise
from the past and bless posterity,
and approaching— yet never—
paradise, disassembled and
read over and over, forever and ever,
words and worlds without end...
(amen?)

The Science

The inspiration for this poem came after reading about scientists’ theories regarding whether time has directionality, specifically Einstein’s belief that time is simply another dimension and exists all at once, despite our perception that it only moves forward. As I thought about what it might mean for all of time to simultaneously exist, I began comparing it to other things physically present but read in a certain direction, like pages of a book or base pairs of DNA. The idea of comparing time to DNA led to this imaginative poem about time being like a strand of DNA with many of the properties of DNA, such as unraveling and being recopied, sometimes erroneously. Errors, though rare, are a normal part of DNA replication that occurs when the DNA replication machinery incorrectly matches, inserts, or deletes a base pair. Most of the time such errors are removed or corrected using many methods, such as excising sections of DNA and recopying, or sometimes phagocytosing (engulfing and destroying) entire cells gone wrong, as with cancer. Other times the body may fail to correct a mutation, and it can be neutral, harmful, or even occasionally beneficial. When these helpful mutations occur in gametes that will be passed on, the mutation can benefit future generations.

The Poet

G. Carlson is a writer living in Indiana, and is currently working on her first novel. She has a poem forthcoming in Honeyguide Magazine. She holds degrees in biology and nutrition and has publications in academic journals as well.