Tuesday, October 13, 2015

How on Earth?


Take a few minutes to think about this:
Before dawn you step outside to see Mercury
On the horizon lighted by the approaching sun.
Overhead, Venus and Jupiter shine brightly

Above in the heavens, all worlds millions upon
Millions of miles from Earth. Now consider
Nearly fifteen billion years earlier, the Big Bang
Of creation if you will. And later, the billions

Upon billions of super novae explosions, a uni-
verse expanding, the galactic clusters formed
From gathering accreted swirls of cosmic dust.
It took almost 10-billion years for the Earth to

Find its rightful place in a newly formed solar
System of the Milky Way, just one galaxy among
Billions and billions known swirling in the cosmos
Today. Consider the heating and the cooling, the

Bombardment of our planet by asteroids and com-
ets. Consider the collisions of planetesimals bat-
tling it out for orbital supremacy circling the sun.
(Now things are really, really getting serious.) I

Could go on and on with this, so let’s jump ahead
And get closer to the point. Once the Earth was
Capable of supporting life as we know it, millions
Upon millions of years ago, it wasn’t until some

Two-hundred thousand years past that we, mo-
dern man evolved from the primordial soup. How
Many volcanic eruptions, plant and animals decay-
ing, wind-blown dust storms, torrential rains,

Puddles of mud created and evaporated did it take,
How many millennia of seasons before just the right
mixture of all the elements ever separated and coa-
lesced, how many atoms split and rearranged through-

out this vast expanse of universal time and space
Did it take to bring your conscious being and mine
To light, to place me here and now, writing this very
Piece, and you somewhere out there in your very

Own place and time reading these very lines? It’s all
Either a grand cosmic joke or a damn bloody miracle.
Think of it, and what we’ve been through just to get
Here, you and I. Look up at the sky and wonder, how
On Earth…?  

Chris Hanch  10-13-15




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