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Rated: E · Poetry · Scientific · #2182548
A reflection on our place in the universe
An image of the Earth taken from lunar orbit by Bill Anders during the Apollo 8 mission


In Significance


I’m merely one among many,
part of a fleeting mayfly dance,
unremarked and unremembered
when my three score and ten have passed.

A lifetime is barely a blink
on a world that circles a sun,
with billions of years behind it
and billions of years to come.

Earth’s only a small blue marble
in thrall to a yellowish star,
neither especially noted
in a far-flung galactic arm.

Sol’s one of two hundred billion,
just a drop in the Milky Way.
There may be a trillion planets
in a galaxy’s full array.

Our galaxy’s just a fragment
among trillions that fill the night,
eternally soaring outward
in sublime universal flight.

Trillions of trillions of planets,
how many where life can hold sway?
How many civilizations
where extraterrestrials pray?

I’m just a pin-point speck of dust,
and I’m lost in a vast expanse.
The fact that I exist at all
seems miraculous random chance.

A place in this cosmic wonder
I can claim because here I stand,
fully part of God’s creation,
though I’m less than a grain of sand.




Author's Note
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