Cockroaches
In Florida “palmetto bugs” are in your face.
Hawaii’s giant flying roaches land on you.
Cockroaches are everywhere but out in space;
the German ones ubiquitous, and never few.
They seem to bounce right back from being stomped and squished.
They laugh at radiation levels that should kill.
They taste your gourmet meal before it’s even dished,
right after wallowing in steaming septic swill.
They have a lot in common with us apex predators,
devouring everything, our hunger never fed,
or with the agents of our commerce: creditors.
They will be here long after other life is dead.
They can survive ordeals that reason says they couldn’t,
or that, I sometimes feel, like Homo sap., they shouldn’t.
Lovely rhyming poem, Jess! Written today! (Sandra)
In particle storms beyond our gaze,
Laws of physics dance in paradoxical ways.
Muons, fleeting, from space they fall;
A journey through our atmosphere, a cosmic sprawl.
Elusive particles, like roaches, defy the norm,
Surviving where they ought not, in the eye of the storm.
Through mountains they pierce, undeterred by matter dense,
Like cockroaches in space, they mock our common sense.
In particle detectors their presence is revealed,
A testament to resilience, their story conceals.
For just as roaches roam through earthly debris,
Muons traverse space, a cosmic odyssey.
Nice! Muons thank you.