Brilliant blue, swimming in an ocean black;
pinprick of light barely visible from distant planets,
the sweet, living dirt on which all our hopes,
dreams, plans, history, and future reside.
Fragile, but strong, older than time,
our home.
Swinging in wide ellipse around brilliant flame,
small yet full to brim,
our Earth.
When the men of the future finally bid goodbye
to this, our green oasis in the darkness,
will they shed tears?
Will they remember the violent history? the blood
and tainted soil? the tears of mothers?
the schemes of politicians?
the passing quandaries that envelop us now,
but will be meaningless then?
Will they cry to leave our home behind?
Small, little planet circling a sun,
solar system in the arms of a spiral,
one of millions in a galaxy that is
one of hundreds in a cluster that is
one of billions in a universe-
we are so small,
and it is beautiful to be so.
Product of billions of years of chance-
expansion from a single point, energy
bringing destruction and creation in
symbiotic, chaotic harmony.
In a few more billion years, our home will be gone,
and the universe will not be changed greatly
by the absence.
What will become of the Humans,
that precocious species that once inhabited
a starspeck, and thought they were
the center of the cosmos?
Will we have survived our self-destructive tendency
to **** our fellow man?
Will we be standing in gleaming vessels,
watching the sun expand and
consume our Mother whole?
Will we cry to see our old home burn?