I: Absurdity

One lovely Thursday afternoon

Two billion years ago,

A star embraced by arcs of moon,

Conceived despair and woe.

A sordid joke of yellow-red,

Ribald and mocking jape:

To burn with heat in circles dead

with no hope of escape

So solace cursed upon a point,

it drew a mighty plan

As spinning round its lock and joint

its ending now began.

The heaving mass of goo morassed

then gurgled once and sighed;

A rattle scream of flames harassed

what silent void denied.

The sacrificial rings were flung

in sprays across the sky;

The interstitial threads then wrung

as ropes they bound untie.

And in these fictions fracture facts:

A single atom forged

And bellow blown through heaven’s tracts

to find itself disgorged.

The crush of black, once unobserved,

in fire found its sight.

The atom woke from dreams unnerved

in sailing stream of flight.

Without a frame, it screamed in vain

Through paralactic curves

That weave the sieves with cluttered skein

Of dark galactic nerves.

Commotion drowned, it gazed about

along the ends it aimed:

The bluest gem beyond a doubt

the cosmos ever named.

It wept to see a brilliant Earth,

the fate bestowed by chance,

And in its cackles rose a mirth

expressed in photon’s dance.

It splashed the surface spinning fast,

now lost amid the sea.

The water rose at what trespassed,

mistook it for debris.

The liquid swarm convened in waves,

to flood the tiny core.

They stripped and pried, as hunger craves

and always wants for more.

The terror flashed, as pulled apart,

its briefly tasted life

now disappeared before its start

beneath the wetted knife.

So bittersweet, by shades complete,

resigned into the black,

the atom met its end on feet

and braced for last attack.

But fortune found where will converged,

as snatched from death it gasped

And saw from depths the land emerged,

where brethren all were clasped.

A molecule of carbon made

from crystal network cast

through jointed links of atom braid

that helix ghosts amassed.

Began the age of afterbirth,

of structure spat in space,

originating blest on Earth,

atomic interface.

Now watch along the webbing sewn

the single atom weave

Through warps and wefts and whetted stone,

the knits of stellar sleeve.

• Original: February 2025

• Revised: June 2025

Submission History

Date	Publication	Status
March 27, 2025	Rattle Poetry	Rejected
July 15, 2025	Space and Time	Pending