» Be Mine
Jeff Coleman 2006
14 billion years ago, time and space were born,
filled with homogeneous, nearly uniform
quark and lepton plasma that led to you and me,
through the interplay of chance and necessity
The plasma later cooled to make mostly hydrogen,
fueling fusion in the stars' generation one
Supernovas blew up and scattered into space
heavier elements upon which all life is based
On the surface of the Earth, soon after it cooled,
some organic molecule, floating in a pool,
chanced to have a form that made copies of itself:
the ancient ancestor of Prokaryotic cell
Next Eukaryota, with nucleated cells,
symbiotically engulfed power-plant organelles
Multicellular life gained high complexity,
in the bargain trading off immortality
The Cambrian Explosion created the array
of nearly all the phyla found on the Earth today
Chordata with its notochord and post-anal tail
had the backbone needed to, in the end, prevail
Fish and reptiles laid their eggs, but mammals chose live birth,
milking viviparity for everything it's worth
Hominidae stood up when Ardipithecus
jumped down from the ape branch, a biped much like us
Habilis was handy with fire and stone axe
Erectus kept his butt warm in stylish furry slacks
Neanderthals: a dead end, no trace of them remains,
squeezed out by us sapiens, despite their bigger brains
Hunters became farmers, now software engineers
How strange our cosmic voyage of 14 billion years
This journey without meaning, goal, purpose, or design,
could have a happy ending: Just say that you'll be mine