EARTH: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

By David Rogers

"In the beginning, the Earth was without form,
and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,"
or so some versions of the story go.
My fossils tell me, in the beginning
there was no darkness, and no waters.
I was born in the light, made from ashes
of old stars, in a good neighborhood
where gravity still keeps everything
in order. My mother is a star
and stays in touch with all her kids
by subatomic media, though some are so far
away, now, word takes days or weeks
to reach suburbs and rural regions.
My heart is a dynamo of molten lava, face
a facade of breath, cold stone, and blue waters.
I tolerate a species of hominids
who mostly seem not to know
in my story they are nothing but a footnote.
Some day all our ashes
will scatter like leaves in fall, like birds at sunrise.