20150729 (the lucky universe made us)

Not at all the right image (as no one has one--no cameras, no phones--duh!

I’m grateful for the confluence of forces

In the universe which led to our being 

As we explore for exoplanets even vaguely

Like ours we by comparison grasp how many

Circumstances had to be just right else our 

Home would have been a bare stone

The right distance from the right sun

Even the right size improbably large moon

To rake the waters against the shores

And contribute the felicitous churn

That birthed oxygen but even beyond

That how the muons came to make protons

And protons crushed became fiery stars

The engines of the higher elements

I know I’m getting a lot of this wrong

I’ve tried before but science keeps changing

I’m old enough to have read books relating 

A once stable universe never changing

How Hubble’s spectrographic study

Blew that to hell though he still has 

Halton Arp nipping at his ankles

Is there a scientific fact which is not

Somewhere in dispute but of exoplanets

They can’t be too big or we’d never

Get up from the ground and 

They can’t be too small

Or everything we needed to breathe

Would float away we’d need it to wobble

At the right time have a magnetic field

To keep us from cancerous rays not to consider

How many errant butterflies we’d need to place

Hurricanes on the other side of the earth

Exactly when needed I tell you it’s a boggle

But the theorists claim however many factors

It would take there are ample galaxies with

Sagan’s billions of stars 

To make the likelihood

Of creatures like us somewhere 

A pretty good bet

Either before us or after we fade

If you throw in alternative forms of life

Based on methane or crystals or 

Who knows what even more friends

Whom we’d never think were at all

Similar slower/faster thinking some unable

To conceptualize kept as pets

In pressurized gaseous tanks who’d 

Look through observation ports to plead

For freedom and we’d never know 

We were stepping on souls 

I’m particularly pleased

I appeared now when we think we have

Progressive medical care not

Blood-sucking leech cures or 

Unanaesthetized amputations I guess 

It all depends on what you are used to

So looking around I’m still kind of glad

For it all I’ve enough imagination

To think of things better

But you must work with what you’ve got

Which I think is ample if not

Quite a lot

c. J.S.Manista, 2015