STARDOM
Blind has the blazing cosmos
been for 15 billion years;
blind too, evolution’s bacterial
beginnings four billion years ago.
The careening asteroid whose quenching
left a Caribbean crater
sixty-six million years ago,
creating a carnage of killing—
the great Cretaceous crash,
the dinosaur extinction disaster—
spared mouse-sized mammals
who multiplied and mastered
a million newly empty niches
with a speedy speciation.
Through science we can clearly see
our familiar family tree. And we
are branch of a branch of a branch,
a twig in the twists of DNA and time,
a cosmic conglomeration of molecules
thoughtlessly endowed with thought—
and thus belittled and harassed by hindsight,
foiled and fearful of near-sighted forethought.
We are the stars of our own story,
the daring divas of stardust.
