The endless years that have elapsed
since atoms shattered emptiness
igniting stars and galaxies
with elemental energies
must not be wasted here tonight
nor fall toward mediocrity
beneath the grief of gravity.
Let's leave our sleep and wake to see
the grandeur of cosmology,
the reasons things gain force and mass
in orbits that shall crash or pass,
how space and time define but part,
or where death ends when lost souls start
prospecting heavens past a prayer.
Come peer beyond this cosmic glare:
our universe of cyclic births,
of untold worlds and rarer Earths,
how black holes, fed upon our light, – extraordinary truths to know
when thoughts like rockets freely go
toward weightlessness, escaping speeds,
exploring how all life proceeds.