“We are very rare configurations of atoms.
We are the only island of meaning in the Galaxy.
We are it in the galaxy. This is it.”

Brian Cox

I

I know that
our bodies (carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms)
have been assembled from different stars
over billions of years

that me and you are only a blink in the expansion
and contraction of the pattern of the universe
that I will die, you will die
that the atoms huddled around an illusionary self

will return to where we came from
maybe remembering that the universe is within us
whilst we dance on the inexpressible mirror of the universe
in our journey to understanding the incomprehensible

we are the interlude of complexity between order and disorder –
a finite space-time in which intelligence is born
just a brief blink, a slight nod   barely visible in the vibrational whole
a finite bubble in the soup of the universe

so slight, so fragile   our human existence in thoughts and dreams
a fermata in the universal song of the universe
singing poetry, making love and war on a distant
spiral reverberating in matter
we live in this tiny window of where immortality
has been ruled out by the laws of nature –
dappling in intelligence, maths, music, and meaning
leaving the most petite signature of our brief existence

written across the sky of our galaxy, where it bends and curves

II

deeper into the Great Release
she felt the stars in her eyes swirling
in the marbled, inky colours of universes within universes
and sang…

“Put me in a lake of ice to snuff out the illusionary fire
of creativity and illusions of meaning, fluttering like
blinded moths around the golden eye in my belly”.

“Let me feel the cold indifference of a forever-receding Universe
within and without. receding into the past, spiralling light years
of something unfathomable that does not last”.

“Let me be a humble hostage, an inconsequential finite life-form
hovering in a pause between, glimpsing the mirror of the inexpressible
in its full violent force, cold and indifferent
and let me feel it
as a wondrous thing
before I die,” she cried.