This Restless Planet

We are of Planet Earth, our home
providing the only refuge we shall
ever know as infinitesimally irrelevant
creatures, less than a random
afterthought of nature's punctilious
design; flecks on the endless landscape
of this ever-expanding universe.

A universe so vast and incomprehensible
our finest minds struggle to achieve
their hypotheses of how and why a
collegium of everything erupted from
nothing whatever but the immensity
of dark, dust-and-ice crammed particles
hydrogen atoms bearing the nucleus of life.

We cling to the carapace of our Planet
manipulate and alter what nature permits
and settle ourselves into the incredible
lightness of time and light-years' distance
from our primordial existence. We know
what we see, feel, hear and experience
and shun acknowledgement of our frail selves.

Nature reminds us through the medium
of her atmospheric and geological tool box,
wiping the slate of her features clean,
sending typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes,
cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis to
rouse us from our undeserved complacency
to the terror of our tenuous existence.