Stardust to Starfish

Stardust:

A cosmos born and stellar death

Hurling debris into the beyond

Rocks become future planets

And dust flies

So many motes into the expanding black

Spanning interstellar distances

Some to collide, some to collect

Others to wander, lacking acceleration

Onward.

Some become caught in wells,

drawn downward into the deep

and collected by planetary atmospheres.

Motes in the stratosphere;

some yet wander downward

drifting on planetary currents

with scents never elsewhere met

and alien scapes of green, blue, browns

swathed in toxic oxygen

A mote falls, dust into the deep,

Into the blue, to meet other dust

becoming nutrients, food

becoming algae, food

adrift and away

cycled and recycled in trophic webbery

once and again, and yet again.

Until, rambling along an ephemeral shore,

a casual encounter

with a starfish.

About this poem: I am fascinated how everything in our universe is interconnected - from the most ancient stars to the “triple-junction” mudcracks in Death Valley to even the humble (but ecologically important) starfish (or sea star, as echinoderm researchers call them). I had listened to a podcast on stellar dust and how we are all made of stellar dust, and my fingers itched for the keyboard…