Upon a Star

 

Have you wished

         upon a star?

 

And yet still

         wonder

                 who you are

                               and what’s to come

                                           now that we know

                                                   where we are from?

A dot,

         a speck,

                 a blink of the eye:

                          our marble planet

                                  in a pale dark sky.

 

Like a grain of sand

         on a cosmic beach.

                 What is our significance

                          even if we reach beyond our moon

or our solar system?

                                           We’ve never been center.

                                                   Illusory anthropocentrism.

Like ants we swarm

         on this cosmic wonder.

                 Earth with or without us

                          will have lightning and thunder.

 

One day we’ll vanish

         into light energy.

                 When our sun grows dark

                          will there be any memory

                                  of those two-legged creatures

                                           who loved and struggled

                                                   built, wrote, painted, sculpted,

                                                            in cave walls and cathedrals?

We’ll be a faint, distant memory

         etched on the universe’s cosmic tree.

                 An asterisk in a trillion-volume work

                          nothing more or less to see.

 

                                                            Kenn Storck

                                                            June 15, 2023