Our Place in the Cosmos

(Here's a poem I wrote almost exactly a year ago, on a hot day in August.)

My breakfast entertainment this morning

was a documentary about our solar system,

how the planets formed, changed, moved;

how the sun too changed through time.

And as the sun changes, its planets change.

It felt like stepping way way back,

far detached from our current human mess,

imagining a time millions of years ago

when the earth was just forming,

its future still unknown, unknowable.

In present time, our planet is the lucky one,

able to sustain water on the surface,

able to support wondrous forms of life

and maintain enough stability in our atmosphere

for our biosphere to thrive, year after year.

As the sun changes, gradually becoming warmer,

heading toward a final hot explosion in the far future,

what happened to Mercury and Venus will probably happen to us.

The greenhouse effect will trap more and more heat,

the water will evaporate, and life will depart.

It takes my breath away, watching the rise and fall of planets,

the breadth of time so enormous, the scale hard to hold in my mind.

And here I sit, one small person in front of a TV screen

at the peak, perhaps, of earth’s vitality as a host for life,

the landscape out my window full of all manner of living things,

the sun still our friend (except maybe on such a hot day as today).

And now, filled with awe for the cosmos,

I decide to forgo watching more of the troubling political news,

and instead go on a walk in a new-to-me forest.

I walk up a winding path into trees arching overhead,

birds singing, a soft wind blowing, sunlight highlighting leaves.

I am aware of the infinite smallness of our problems

compared to the vastness of our history and our future.

I’m filled with gratitude that I am living on earth at this time in its history.

They say all we really have is the present moment,

and this moment among the trees is indeed wonderful.

Just one thing might make it even better.

On my way home, I succumb to the temptation of the ice cream store,

celebrating aliveness with that cool delicious taste on my tongue.