Life on Earth

 Life on Earth


Imagine her beginnings,

this Mother Earth of ours.

Hot and twirling elements

slowly becoming a ball.


Then cooling, cooling,

the surface becoming hard,

the inside molten,

spinning from light to dark,


circling the bright hot star

we call the sun,

as mountains rise

and oceans are carved.


For eons this hard round rock

had no life, and then

who knows how,

the tiniest life emerged.


And then, the explosion of Earth’s life

was like a science fiction adventure,

the bounty and grand complexity

astonishing if we let ourselves see it.


And now among the billions and billions 

of living beings, with life in and on the ground

and in the sky, I stop on a forest path

and am awed by one small miraculous flower.

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