There is a steep aloneness

Here in the silence and depth

Of the starry night sky.

This is not a world

For fragile souls, yet

Still we are of the Earth,

Its strength and resilience,

Its mountains, oceans,

And flowing streams

Urgent with teeming life,

And too of this Universe

Of burning suns whirling

Across time and space,

Life ever in movement,

Stillness and death surely

Only the makings of myth.

The measure of humanity

Begins and ends thus here

On this whirling path

Of fellow living travelers.

Only time is truly ours.

It is a lost belonging,

The connection to place,

The Earth and one another,

That fuels the emptiness,

The pain and cruelty

That scar both the Earth

And the human heart.