Shape For A Moment

I was born in the fiery birth of the universe

Atoms torn from the stuff of time

Ripped from the incandescence of the Big Bang

Cooled into the blazing nuclear heat of the furnace

Of blue-white stars, nuclei smashed together into things

Strange and new

In the galaxy-spanning eruption of supernovae

I was scattered across the expanding universe

As gas, as cosmic dust

As the stuff that congealed to stars anew.

And I was born again

Aglow in the rushing dark,

Joined, broken, merged and joined

Things made from things,

To be scattered once more.

And then I was an accretion disk

Clotting around another sun

Into a planet where the sky rained

Electric fire on a chaos of mud and water

Long chain molecules twisted to life

And I was in it.

Drinking in the sun. Chewing carbon,

Putting forth leaves

Clawing my prey to the ground on a long gone plain.

Living, eating, being eaten

Dying a moment, to live in a moment

As something else once more.

And so, here am I

That had been stars, and will be stars again

For this moment, a hairless ape on a ball of rock.

This body, these thoughts

But a shape for a moment

Of matter indestructible

Born in the instant of the universe

And living as long as the universe does

So what does this moment mean?

This consciousness that will wink out in a moment

As meaningful as a spark of light

Here now, now gone.

So tell me, why should I be sad?

Sadness will die with today.

And tomorrow, that which was once a star, and will be a star again

Will live on as a lump of clay.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2016

[Image Source]