Silently I sing, my hymn the autumn splendor of the trees above, my music fallen leaves that crackle at my feet. In brilliant counterpoint the breeze plays rippling riffs among the fluttering leaves that gleam like golden organ pipes against blue satin curtains in the sky. Standing out among the golden ashes, sugar maples rival stained glass windows, blending shades of wondrous hues in seamless tapestries of living flames. This towering nave of trees inspires at first a soaring anthem filled with joy, then slowly, sadly leads to somber thoughts of death. A requiem filled with glory, yes, but all those sparkling colors fade to browns, and soon bare trees will mourn their fallen crowns. Intertwining fugues of scents from newly-fallen leaves and distant fires will mingle soon with musty smells of fresh decay. Beetles, worms, and germs will work unseen to transform death and generate anew the stuff of life awaiting spring’s return. This pageant, death and life, rebirth through countless years, is wrought by spinning, tilting earth, in repetitious circles rushing ‘round the sun. Suddenly aware, I feel that awful motion – spinning flight through endless space; the earth beneath my feet now seems no longer firm. I feel the earth revolve around the sun, the solar system ‘round its galaxy, the galaxies in turn rotate, expand, in headlong flight from cosmic blast. And now I see the distant future - falling leaves and verdant buds in spring the singing of the migrant birds, will not repeat forever. Those glorious seasons? – just an interlude between the molten land and boiling seas of newborn earth and all-consuming flames from solar throes of death. Yet still the universe expands, creating stars and life from fragments of exploding suns, beginning cycles, life and death, replacing lost-forever worlds with new. Whole galaxies collide, are ripped apart and reassembled; mighty blasts explode in space and rip that space itself apart; conflagrations light the heavens. And then the stars will die; in creeping darkness, entropy's relentless force will level all to cold and lifeless wastelands, remnants of vast glories past and futures never realized. The final act begins; now gravity's unyielding grip grasps frozen bits of stars, galactic corpses, flotsam on celestial seas, and slowly starts to gather home its wayward flock of quarks. Expansion now contracts, reversing time and entropy; at last the long rewinding has begun. E pluribus unum - disparate laws of physics reunite in growing mass, four into one, Apocalyptic horsemen, melded into mighty unity. And again, and again, and again... the resurrected universe explodes, just as it has and will for evermore, creating and destroying stars in fiery forges without end. Reincarnation? Resurrection? Or just a cold, dead, universe of mass and force, exploding and collapsing through eternal time?
Written January 1998 by David L Brungart - © Copyright