Shiva's Dance

November, and I'm sitting by a somber window
pondering. The trees have shed their golden leaves
as casually as snowflakes fall, or icicles drip.
Why not? Nothing's lost. Drips return to clouds.
Leaves return to mold, mold again to leaves.

The north wind moans, the woods shed ancient oaks;
scatters broken limbs and shattered trunks
upon the leaves to shift life's shape to shelves
of orange fungi, squirms of many legged
creatures, tiny things unseen.

The tale rolls on, as T. Rex tells in stone:
One day the earth will shed us too: my bones
and yours. New York will gape like broken teeth.
Interstates will be but gaps among the hills,
lost among the leaves, wandered by…who knows?

It's written in the stars: at last our sun will squeeze
its last few protons, blaze in Shiva's Ananda Tandava,
a tsunami made of particles and light to fling us,
leaves and bones and all, to emptiness. To coalesce,
as Shiva dances on, to make new suns somewhere.

For yet a while. The universe expands. Our remnants
drift apart and cool. Physics' final prophecy is protons
and electrons out of energy, flotsam in a lifeless sea
of phantom lights that flicker in the deep.

Shiva stirs. Opens half an eye.
A flicker blooms into a Bang.

November, and I'm sitting by a somber window
pondering. The trees have shed their golden leaves…