BIRTH & OBLIVION

Earth’s end was written at its start
It is the
unwinding
of the universe’s tendons wound taut, the
undoing
of flesh, metal, and rock
in a battle against entropy

Sinew and bone, teeth and nail
deconstructed
before lovers can utter
at least we’ll be together

No anger, no bargaining, just simple
disintegration
of the face of the world into sand
cast
onto the dunes of the cosmos
crucial mortar for
forming universes
the focus of the next
child-planet

At the pace of millennia the ample dust
contrives
new life until it crumbles
into the rudiments:
carbon, nitrogen,
oxygen, phosphorus

This, the bare bones
the crucial vertebrae
the innards of universes
the provincials of
Inanimacy and
Sentience
Protons, electrons, neutrons
masses of empty space
containing force to construct
life
of nebulas, of animals
of us

Us, the wound tight, the
brick and mortar, the

loom of the spinstress, the
piece she weaves, the
thread the
needle the
hand. The
beginning and the
end

The birth and the
oblivion.