At What Point Life? Poem by Norm Milstein

At what point life? Does life happen when the crucial carbon
falls into place, creating a molecule
with strong self-replicating tendencies, or is carbon already alive?
At what point life?

At what point life? At what sublime, unfathomable instant
in the ferment of evolving chemistry does the miracle occur when, however dimly, an assemblage of chemicals
is suddenly aware it exists, or do the chemical elements themselves
have some weird form of consciousness?
At what point life?