JOURNEY OF A SILICON ATOM
I am an atom of silicon
born from the belly of a supernova star
flung far into space in its last burst of glory
drawn into the great wheel of its dust cloud
congealed into a planet
with a hot molten core
For eons I roll in slow waves of magma
deep below the planet's thickening crust
at last pushing upward to the mouth of a great volcano
spewed forth splendidly
a spray of fire against the black night sky
I come to rest in glossy black basalt
waiting patiently until the rains
dislodge me from this barren unmoving rock
washing me suddenly into a tumbling rivulet
down to a river and on to the sea
Oh! the glory of it as I am snatched up and
bound into the crystal shell of a diatom
wondrous designs of the sea's tiny creatures
delicate as blown glass ornaments
splendid as the crowns of kings
But little good my shortlived vanity
as I sink to the seafloor and am swallowed up
in a trilobite's gut
then yet again swallowed by an imperious nautilus
huffing and puffing its jetway through the dark waters
as it builds me into its striped hull
What great upheaval now is this
as the Earth's very belly rumbles
and my nautilus, to whom I have grown so attached, as we say
is hurtled onto dry ground
as the waters recede?
Here my star dust is ground to Earth dust
as the crustal agony thrusts plate
against great tectonic plate
and I blow-- still one atom of silicon--
across new mountains in red sand storms
till coming to rest again where shallow inland seas
slowly give rise to swamps
Here I become flesh-eating plant
and dragonfly wing
Whatever absorbs me paying the price of dissolving again
that other things may form
I live on now in great scaly trees
one after another, until I am buried into the Earth
beneath the heavy stomp of tail-dragging dinosaurs
I am coal, fellow to legions of carbon atoms
with their own tales to tell through the long night of rest
Who knows how often the seas come and go above us
the deserts dry and the rains return?
At last the bowels of the Earth shake once more
and I suddenly see the light of day
exciting my lust for new travels
Gone are the great swamps and stompings--
or are they? for here come thundering buffalo herds
to graze the land far and wide
In blades of prairie grass
I soon make their intimate acquaintance
traveling their long guts only to grow into new grass
with each renewed cycle of birth and death
The pattern is broken when flood rains relieve the bondage
and I continue my journey in swirling waters
until a filament of fungus catches me along some sandy bank
and draws me into itself
The fungus lives among the roots of plants
trading nourishment and one day I am traded
Sucked up along roots into stem and then leaf
where I glisten in sun and rain while the plant
makes its food and lives its life
One day a deer comes nibbling by the bank and
lo I am there in its dark warm insides
ever moving through its bloodstream and cells
until the deer is brought down by a wolf
I am left behind after wolf and cubs feast
for vultures and worms and flies
and legions of tinier microbes
the great recyclers
not knowing which of them will send me on my way again
As it happens I travel on in the shell of a small beetle
who meets her end in the mouth of a frog
who no sooner having swallowed me
is himself recycled through a great white heron
who excretes my bit of beetle shell
unceremoniuosly and still undigested
back into the river
where finally waters dissolve the chitin bit of shell
releasing me to tumble freely once more
Now on the glistening surface
a gust of wind lifts me high into the air
higher and higher into a thick grey cloud
and then still higher into white wispy strands
that blow to colder climes
Oh! newest of adventures high in the sky
over the low spring arctic sun
crystallizing into a snowflake
falling back to Earth's white cover
where I wait for the summer melt
Then tumbling again through bright clear streams
flanked by fields of flowers
as I wash once more to the sea
Gone are the trilobites, the lifeforms once I knew
but oh! what marvelous times befall me now
as I cycle through plankton and seagrass and fishes
tubeworms and lobsters in seas chill and tropic
thrilling to the great diversity
ever renewing my role in
the great dance of life
Are they eons passing now or only moments?
as I lie amidst the oceans' sediment
pressed ever downwardas layers of sand and mud settle over me
ground along in the spreading seafloor until
it meets the edge of a great tectonic plate
Pushed downward ever deeper
the old familiar heat of Earth's core warms me
back into the molten magma where this journey began
back among my fellows whose tales of adventure rival my own
We know the Earth's body
in all its magnificent twists and turns
We know its life intimacies
the thrill and speed of cataracts
the measured step of thundercloud
the leisure of mountain and meadow,
the peaceful fall of the snows
We know the heat of the desert
and its cold beneath the moon
we know the moor and mountain
We have been microbes, fungus and plants
we have soared with the beetles and birds
we have been the fishes in the depths of the sea
and the creatures who fish them in turn
There is no part of Earth's body
in which we have not shared
the ever improvisational
dance of life
How many silicon atoms
are dancing in you?