Once,

before this lake turned the color of ripened cherries, before
there was a word for weapon or distance or phone,
a star finished up its nucleosynthesis,
exploded its hydrogen, helium, neon and nitrogen, its sulfur
and iron, all over cosmos town. No one was around,
no one with vision or a craving for lemons.
All there was: stars and exploding stars seeding the universe
with magnesium and carbon, with graphite and diamonds.
All this, and what all else, collected into a pomegranitic
bulge that became our sun, that became the rocky planets
and the gaseous ones, that became the generous
light through pines, us and our armpit glands,
us and our Mother, may I? No, you may not. This was how it began,
before it cooled enough for worms and flukes, way cooler
than that instant when everything that would ever be
became, though it would be a while before figs and plumage,
rain drops and touch. But soon we had gnawing,
and soon we had fathers. Falling water
and falling in love. Before long there was work, and there was wine.
Observances like the Feast of Assumption. Soon after
there was rot and grief. But before that: electrons
and quarks. Protons and neutrons. Somehow, we got hummingbirds
and pavement, dorsal fins and cilantro. Somehow, anger
and shame and faith. Now we are a place
for lace and egrets. Now we have mouthwash and redwoods.
It’s sweet like a good pear, sour like probiotic yogurt.
It began and it seems, like a novel
by Tolstoy, like it will never end, but one day—zip-zap, zap-zip—
the sun will supernova, and we will give back
our copper and plutonium, our aluminum
and titanium. The calcium in our bones will contract into dimensionless
singularity, along with all our shiny silver fillings, our stalks
of wheat, our shocks of turquoise hair.