IRON

(I)

As long ago as forever can be
the heavens sought order in chaos.
There, properties were assimilating
as billions of bodies and galaxies
I was dispersed here, in the third orbit
around a primordial sun.  No life,
only cosmic forces .  Mysterious 
properties- gravity, light, and matter-
brought delicate balance to infinity.
I was an element of the new born earth.

(II)

Time doesn't matter to matter,
not much does to inorganic mass.
Time passes along as strings of events,
and brings subtle changes- like miracles.
I've watched it unfold.  I knew creation.
It seems like it was only yesterday
I saw the first cell slip by in the rain,
then another, forming complex structures.
Enter man, his mind, and passion for fire.

(III)

He was the finest work in ages, this man-
God fearing, fragile, exposed, but clever-
evolving into the great thinking beast-
able to learn, to reason, to conceive
abstract ideas and create from them tools.
I've watched and waited through ages of stone,
and bronze, hoping he would detect me,
bind me and combine me with flame and craft,
and with his resourcefulness pound and cast me
into useful implements- but tools of war?!

(epilogue)

Man didn't matter to matter.  It's hardly
worth the time of inorganic mass
be concerned with short term organics.
Time passes along as strings of events-
subtle changes, beginnings and ends.
The future will be, the past has been.
History is recorded, and then destroyed.
It's hardly worth God's will to create
miracles just to prove His sense of irony.

-dp-
9-14-84