In the beginning, there was just gas
hydrogen drifting in nebulous clouds
assuming fantastic shapes
within which gravity began to
group the atoms into clumps
flocculating into formless blobs
that swarm and meld together
until the weakest of fundamental forces
is magnified by unimaginable volumes
temperature rising with such pressure
that eventually combustion spontaneously
ignites the first generation of stars
A star is a balancing act
between the explosive force of the burn
versus the constant collapsing
pull of gravity but fire consumes
the star and gravity always wins
and the star is blown to bits
to dust in fact – stardust brings
new elements to the feast for
the greedy, next generation
growing in the nursery of new nebulae
The new stars have more complex
deaths with a series of alternating
explosions and collapses each
one concentrating and crushing
new elements into existence
before blasting them into ever
more varied stardust which will
one day make the flesh and bones
of a big-brained hominid
who will gaze back through
generations of galaxies let alone
stars – back towards where it all began…
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics invites us to write a poem on the subject – Metamorphosis of Sorts…