Great Balls Of Fire

There are billions upon billions of giant balls of fire flying through space at fantastic speeds, giant balls of fire that burn for billions and billions of years, so far away they appear to us as distant points of light. Many of these giant balls of fire have smaller bodies circling around them in the mad dash through nearly empty space, and of these smaller rocky bodies many shelter living creatures. And this empty space through which these balls of fire and accompanying planets and satellites are traveling is neither empty nor space, for space does not in fact exist, and neither does time, not in the blinkered, fog-draped sense of our complete misunderstanding. And yet, despite all this, there are still those who do not believe in miracles.

The light of day dims slowly as the slyly stealing dusk
Greets night with loving arms and loving eyes
That hides the guttering fire of the distant near-dead husk
That once held captives spinning in the skies
But now the once bright fire is a giant ball of red
That swallowed all its captives long ago
Its planets and the life they held are gone and all are dead
With nothing left of them to ever show
That life and art and love and music once had graced them all
And creatures who believed that they had made
The world and all within it until chance had made the call
And slowly did their star begin to fade
But was it chance that made the call or was it something old
Far older than they knew that stilled the fire
And though ‘twas running out of time ‘was far from growing cold
And soon would come disaster far more dire
The blast would sunder all around to elemental size
And light the sky a thousand years and more
So bright far distant creatures saw the light and hid their eyes
And knew that fate had that for them in store
And yet did chance or accident have anything to do
With births and deaths of fires freely burned
Or did the fires’ deaths provide star stuff for fires new
And miracles there be for those who’ve yearned
For answers to eternal questions that are ever raised
And looking inward find they do not know
But looking at those points of light upon which eyes have gazed
The answer’s in that tiny, distant glow

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