Earthsick

One day the earth will be devoured
by the ultra-hot skin
of the close-by sun, like a monocyte
patrolling blood,
consuming mutation.

This is Earth’s prophecy, written in physics,
the math-language of mass, and atomic
alphabets of things astronomically epic
by Sun’s core, the top half
of a blazing gaseous hourglass.

Night is illusion’s reprieve, the
universe’s truest nature, purified,
encapsulated in the cool glass hours.

If you learn to harness fire,
are you still converged with night
or are you darkness’ outsider?

Human’s highest capacity: imagine
our planet cinderous behind us,
chasing unburnt worlds for unborn children;
the means an accidental trespass
beyond limits of aerospace and evolution.

To both descendant and ancestor
we’re as inseparably linked
as time is to gravity and space.
As I can tell you the properties of Element
126, I can close my eyes and place

sights that are alien, and molecular
structures I’ve never seen,
clear as a bone needle’s prick
at a phantom hand’s fingertip.
And though I’ve never met the

person with an echo
of my genetic fingerprint,
in her unformed heart,
I can characterize and diagnose
the affliction of being Earthsick.

Marrow-deep in her bones
I can perceive an ache, the
frequency only our DNA can hear—
molecules our planet weaved
and honed over billions of years.

Large brains forged through tentation,
convolutions carved in the dark:
vessels arriving from where we came
bearing fire and feelings
without scientific names.

Just as I can describe the contents
of an atom’s soul, I can tell you
what it’s like to miss a home
I’ve never known at all, but from which
my particles are fragmented,

and what it’s like to peer up into night
at constellations even my father
couldn’t have found, and see
the dead sun’s ghost, its distant light
amongst glowing motes in darkness abound—

Darkness, within and without us:
Light’s foe, frontier, and genesis.