We Have Survived Before  by Dave Joseph Jr
 

We have survived before.

Before the ink dried
on broken promises.
Before the ballot was trusted
to include our names.
Before the soil remembered
our sweat
as sacred.

We have survived
in fields where freedom was a whisper,
in kitchens where justice simmered slow,
in sanctuaries
where even the stained glass
watched us from a distance.

We have known storms—
not of weather,
but of men and systems.
Storms that rewrote laws
to lock us out.
Storms that called us less
and hoped we’d believe it.
But we didn’t.

Because we had songs.
Because we had hands
that built
when nothing was handed.
Because we had faith
that was never bought,
never borrowed—
but burned bright
in the belly
of grandmothers
who prayed with their whole bodies.

We have survived
the silence of the overlooked
and the noise of those
who feared our power.
We’ve survived schools
that taught us half-truths,
and streets

that tried to swallow our sons.

We’ve survived churches
that welcomed our tithe
but not our truth.

And yet—
we loved.
We kept on loving.
We raised children
with hope in their eyes
and courage in their fists.
We planted gardens
in concrete.
We named each other beloved
before the world did.

So don’t ask us
if we’ll make it.
We already have.
We have survived before—
and survival is not the ceiling.
It is the ground
from which we rise.

We are not here
because we were lucky.
We are here
because we are light-bearers.
Because we are dream-carriers.
Because the Spirit
put something in us
that systems could not crush.

And yes,
the fight is not finished.
Yes, the road still rises
against our feet.
But our feet remember
how to walk,
how to march,
how to dance
even when the music is mourning.

We have survived before.
And now,
we build.
We speak.
We vote.
We teach.
We sow.
We serve.
We rise—
not because it’s easy,
but because it is ours to do.

And when they ask
how we endured—
tell them:

We did not just survive.
We transformed.
We turned sorrow into strategy,
memory into movement,
and pain into possibility.

Because we have survived before.
And we will do more than survive again.
We will lead.
We will lift.
We will live free—
and make sure others can too.

 

Believe This  by Richard Levine
 
All morning, doing the hard, root-wrestling
work of turning a yard from the wild
to a gardener’s will, I heard a bird singing
from a hidden, though not distant, perch;
a song of swift, syncopated syllables sounding
like, Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
Can you believe this, believe this, believe? 
And all morning, I did believe. All morning,
between break-even bouts with the unwanted,
I wanted to see that bird, and looked up so
I might later recognize it in a guide, and know
and call its name, but even more, I wanted
to join its church. For all morning, and many
a time in my life, I have wondered who, beyond
this plot I work, has called the order of being,
that givers of food are deemed lesser
than are the receivers. All morning,
muscling my will against that of the wild,
to claim a place in the bounty of earth,
seed, root, sun and rain, I offered my labor
as a kind of grace, and gave thanks even
for the aching in my body, which reached
beyond this work and this gift of struggle.

Mercury  by Suzanne Cleary
 
Maybe it ruins the story to say at the start that no one was hurt
the day Scotty Forester swung open the door of the family car,
climbed up, put one hand on the wheel and, then, while pushing
and pulling on buttons and knobs, he found and released 
 
the brake, and it started, the silver-blue Mercury, to roll 
down Robin Street, best street in the neighborhood for sledding, 
for coasting on a bike with arms waving above your head, 
Scotty gaining speed on the long sweep of that block, heading 
 
toward the intersection, then into it, then speeding 
through, the car beginning to slow as the street leveled out,  
although, toward the end, Scotty going fast enough 
to jump the curb before stopping, three feet from a gas pump. 
 
Maybe knowing the ending ruins this story, but sometimes 
we need a break from dread. We need to know that the car 
did not crash, the child did not die. We need to briefly forget 
that we live in a world where a car is gaining speed, and 
 
no one seems to be at the wheel. We need to be more 
like the dog Scotty drives past, who barks, and runs in circles 
as he barks some more, driven by some circuitry we have lost 
for loving this dangerous life, living it.

What I Carried  by Maggie Smith 
 
I carried my fear of the world
to my children, but they refused it.
 
I carried my fear of the world
on my chest, where I once carried
my children, where some nights it slept
as newborns sleep, where it purred
but mostly growled, where it licked
sweat from my clavicles.
 
I carried my fear of the world
and apprenticed myself to the fear.
 
I carried my fear of the world
and it became my teacher.
I carried it, and it repaid me
by teaching me how to carry it.
 
I carried my fear of the world
the way an animal carries a kill in its jaws
but in reverse: I was the kill, the gift.
Whose feet would I be left at?
 
I carried my fear of the world
as if it could protect me from the world.
 
I carried my fear of the world
and for my children modeled marveling
at its beauty but keeping my hands still—
keeping my eyes on its mouth, its teeth.
 
I carried my fear of the world.
I stroked it or I did not dare to stroke it.
 
I carried my fear of the world
and it became my teacher.
It taught me how to keep quiet and still
 
I carried my fear of the world
and my love for the world.
I carried my terrible awe.
 
I carried my fear of the world
without knowing how to set it down.
 
I carried my fear of the world
and let it nuzzle close to me,
and when it nipped, when it bit
down hard to taste me, part of me
shined: I had been right.
 
I carried my fear of the world
and it taught me I had been right.
I carried it and loved it
for making me right.
 
I carried my fear of the world
and it taught me how to carry it.
 
I carried my fear of the world
to my children and laid it down
at their feet, a kill, a gift.
Or I was laid at their feet.

                   Poems for Mother’s Day 2026

The Mother Secret  by Sophie Strand

I have a secret. You are- whether moss, falcon,
mycelium, or lonely dawn-watcher at the riverside,
a mother. And you are mothers. By the galactic
complexity in your gut, by seasons and pollen and
footstep sucking mud, by the twin wings of your lungs,
by the green wind that comes to gently tuck
a curl behind your ear. Your body mothers you.

And child-like you nuzzle deep inside other bodies.
Forest bodies. Spore bodies. Weather bodies as blue
and vast as fabric. A man can mother his own mother.
A little girl on a mountain mothers the summit, the lichen
shepherds a salamander across the trail. A woman
can mother herself, tenderly, by making coffee
strong enough, placing the tulips in a butter-circle
of sun on the windowsill.
I know your wound is salt-rimmed and stings. I know
you ache for lullabies, a memory of haven, sound and natural
as a swallow’s nest. But here, let me give you a world-large
gift. A gift you also give me.

Everybody is a mother. Everybody can turn to the other
And offer a song, a wink, a fierce embrace.



When I'm An Old Lady  by Joanne Bailey Baxter

When I'm an old lady, I'll live with each kid,
And bring so much happiness just as they did.
I want to pay back all the joy they've provided.
Returning each deed! Oh, they'll be so excited!
(When I'm an old lady and live with my kids...)
I'll write on the walls with reds, whites, and blues,
And bounce on the furniture...wearing my shoes.
I'll drink from the carton and then leave it out.
I'll stuff all the toilets and oh, how they'll shout!
(When I'm an old lady and live with my kids...)
When they're on the phone and just out of reach,
I'll get into things like sugar and bleach.
Oh, they'll snap their fingers and then shake their head,
And when that is done, I'll hide under the bed.
(When I'm an old lady and live with my kids...)
When they cook dinner and call me to eat,
I'll not eat my green beans or salad or meat.
I'll gag on my okra, spill milk on the table,
And when they get angry...I'll run...if I'm able!
(When I'm an old lady and live with my kids...)
I'll sit close to the TV, through the channels I'll click,
I'll cross both eyes just to see if they stick.
I'll take off my socks and throw one away,
And play in the mud 'til the end of the day!
(When I'm an old lady and live with my kids...)
And later in bed, I'll lay back and sigh,
I'll thank God in prayer and then close my eyes.
My kids will look down with a smile slowly creeping,
And say with a groan, "She's so sweet when she's sleeping!"



A Sword Shall Pierce Your Heart  by Pádraig Ó Tuama

What’s your mother like? he asked.
Like? She laughed. She is an event. Like nothing 
else. She is like the heat that makes the oil in trees 
explode. She’s like the blade that slices
marble, or tufts of grass that make the limestone crack.
She’s like the stream that trickles down the hill
then splits the canyon. She is like the dew
that rots the grass. Why do you ask?
 
I was thinking about mine, he said. She spent her life
observing me. Giving me attention. Once
I saw her picking up the toenails I’d just cut.
What are you doing? I asked her. Never mind, she said,
they’re mine now. She was a mystery
to me. Storing things inside her like an
arsenal for a war she never waged.
 
I like the sound of her, she said, and I bet
she’s got pent-up rage. I would have, 
if I’d had you to raise. You’re not easy.
You’d have been a complicated son to mother.



Asking About My Mother  by Crystal Wilkinson

In the small kitchen, the hog’s head weaves
the gamey scent of death throughout the house.
My grandmother scrapes black hair
from the hog’s pink head with the sharp blade
of her butcher knife. I ask her about my mother;
I always ask her about my mother. I play paper dolls
under a formica table with pearls around my neck
& pink lipstick from my mother’s treasure chest.
My grandmother places the head into the tub & i watch her hands,
wait for her to tell me where my mother’s gone.
My grandmother fills the tub with water.
I hate that she always reminds me of all she’s done for love.
Remember. Remember. Hair. Face. Knife.
She lifts the heavy tub & situates the hog upon the stove
covering all the burners & turns on all the eyes.



Daughter at 16   by Andrea Potos

Each day is another cutting away
from the body of mother/
daughter, each stitch released
to make room for the girth of her reach. 

I tell myself this is how
it is done, 
picturing the way she’d sit
for hours on her toy room rug,
cutting along the dots
to free her paper dolls
from the background that held them. 



Flyway  by Maxine Scates

The wind has come up 
and now there is a cloud behind the mountain.  
How many times did she tell me the story  
of my birth? The story ended when she’d say, 
and that was the happiest day of my life, and 
I’d feel a little sad because I’d had no child 
and would never have a day like hers. Sometimes, 
I can see the river bottom and its glitter 
of stones. Then a fish leaps in sunlight rippling 
the surface. Sometimes, I listen to the birds, 
our seers, the pileated always laughing. I’ve read 
the dead in dreams are never dead, 
and yes, it is their aliveness that is reassuring, 
their going on even as they leave us here. Just now 
the shadow of wings, and a far-off child’s voice 
shouting Hey, Mom.


Preserving Sweetness  by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

The whole house smelled
of ripening then the day mom
made apples into sauce.
The heat from the stove
made the small kitchen
swelter, and the autumn air
almost shined with the bright
scent of Jonathan, Pippin,
Winesap, Cortland.
Her arms were strong then,
straining to push the blushing
pink mash through the sieve,
slow and stiff with the effort.
Perhaps there is a language
somewhere that has a word
for this: the way something sweet
can linger, how it flows over,
around and through the body
like the cidery scent of apples
till it lodges itself in the memory.
Oh Mama, I want to serve this
sweetness to you now,
the memory of you stirring
with two good, strong arms,
the way you put all of who you were
into the smallest of acts,
how fifty years later,
what you did that one afternoon
still matters.
 


Bumper Crop  by David M. Tookey

Mom’s gone, but memory
keeps her present.
She would have enjoyed the 
squash I planted this summer.

The seed catalogue says:
“This variety is rich and sweet 
and it makes the best pumpkin pie
on Earth.”
[Insert ‘mom’ for ‘variety’ above.]

I created a round layer-cake of soil
and fish compost-a squash circle-
for optimal growth.  The young 
starts are, in fact, quite lush!

The plants wilt in the heat.
Like me.
They recover in the mornings and evenings.
Like me.

Mom, we’re gonna have a bumper crop.
What should we do with it all?


 

Tree  by Jane Hirshfield
 
It is foolish
to let a young redwood   
grow next to a house.
 
Even in this   
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
 
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—
 
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.   
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
 

Heart Donkey by Moudi Sbeity

If the heart were an animal
certainly it would be that stubborn,
large faced servant with its antenna 
ears and a loyalty so determined 
to pulse each hoof forward, one 
in front of the other, carrying 
the weight of your life, out to 
the field, I imagine, where it may 
finally kneel in that grass, and 
having no ambition left, roll in its 
brayerful of delight, its begging eyes 
full of that sweet, delicious darkness.  

Old Man Passing Through a Doorway  by Albert Huffstickler

 
I’m looking for that place inside you
where everything passes through you,
where you’re like the rain,
giving and receiving at the same time
as you pass on to new identities—
that place where fate and destiny are one
and nothing is required.

I’m looking for that moment’s stillness
where everything becomes crystal clear
and you see yourself as from a distant hill
or a star, everything in perspective,
the good and the bad balanced and the same,
all the moments of your life leading to this moment,
then spreading out from it in perfect order,
no questions asked.

I’m looking for that time that is all time
condensed into a single moment
then spreading out in all directions infinitely
like a stone dropped into the water.
I’m searching my mortality from end to end
for just that place, having sought it in the stars too long.

I watch an old man hobble to the door bent sideways,
each step an infinity,
then pause in the doorway to gaze into the next room,
a common place but a wonder to him.

I would move into each moment of my life
as totally engrossed as he is,
bending to the weight of the planet then flowing with it.
Watching this old man pass through a doorway,
I am all men passing into the next moment.
The light from the doorway haloes the bent head
and for this moment, I’ve found what I am seeking.

From the Moon   by Betsy Mars 

Borders blurred, Earth is one, dwarfed by the Moon.
Lunar curve eclipses Sun from the Moon.
Integrity disappears in darkness—
humans never so far-flung. From the Moon
voices surf radio waves back to shore.
On the far side, Earthshine stuns from the Moon.
So many craters, so much to harvest:
silicon, magnesium from the Moon.
We claim what we find. We name it ours—
for our ears, a story spun from the Moon.
Field of stars, Mars revealed; I dream of peace
in times of war. “No rerun,” peals the Moon. 

 Wildlife  by Ellen Bass

The woman who was saving iguanas opened the cage of the newest arrival and asked if I wanted to hold him. She showed me how to slip my forearm under his scaly belly and bring him to my chest, not unlike soothing a colicky baby, though the iguana showed no distress and breathed evenly against my body, not cold, not warm, as if he didn’t mind being suspended in a stranger’s arms, as if nothing could surprise him in the tumble of the world he’d been swept up into. The iguana was strapped into a thin black harness that made him look like a leatherman from the Castro, an old queer with spiked hair and his wrinkled dewlap. I’d had a bad day, well really a bad year, and the one before that wasn’t good either. My child wasn’t talking to me and I’d stopped talking to everyone else. The iguana was still as a monk in prayer, all that moved were his ruched eyelids which opened and closed over his orange eyes. His chest filled and emptied with the dry hot air we shared. I thought to myself, even this is something.

 

 

To hear Ellen read her poem, click on this link:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/1764314/wildlife?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Tools  by Pat Valdata

The expert flint knapper holds
a hunk of white rock as big as 
his left hand. With his right, 
he smacks the large rock with 
a smaller, harder one. Whack.

One flake falls off, exposing sharp,
shiny gray flint. Whack. Whack.
Whack. Flakes pile up at his feet.
Down one side then the other  whack
he smashes the small rock  whack

against the larger, creating  whack
what we’d call a razor-sharp  whack
edge on both sides, leaving one  whack
rounded end uncut to form  whack
a handhold. This, he explains, switching 

now to a hammer made of elk antler
to hone the edge even more  tap
is the Stone-Age equivalent  tap
of a Swiss army knife. Anyone  tap
with basic skill and a chunk  tap

of flint can make a hand axe, just
as they’d done in this same spot
two hundred thousand years ago. 
This archeologist can look at a
hand axe in a museum and tell 

from the pattern on the edge 
exactly how it was made, see
mistakes like one he just made,
because, he says, laughing,
that old feller and me, we’re 

only human.

The Materialism of Angels   by Jack Ridl
 
“Who would say that pleasure is not useful?”—Charles Eames
 
Of course the angels dance. If not
on the head of a pin, then maybe
on the boardwalk along the ocean of stars.
And they eat hot and spicy: salsa,
tabasco, red peppers. They love
mangoes. They can munch
for hours on cashews. Olives
sit in bronze bowls on the cherry
tables next to their canopy beds
where the solace of pillows swallows
their sweet heads and the quiet
of silk lies across their happy backs.
They know the altruism of material things.
They want to say to us, “We’ll sleep
next to you. Feel our soft and unimposing
flutter across your shoulders, on your
heartbroken feet.” They want us
to take, eat, to smell the wood,
run our tired fingers over the rim of
every glass, give our eyes the chance
to see the way the metal bends and
curves its way into the black oval
of the chair. They want us to feel
the holiness of scratching where it
itches, rubbing where it hurts. They
want us to take long, steamy showers
and a nap. They know how easily
we follow directions: hook the red wire
to the front of the furnace, fill in only
the top half of the life insurance form.
They have no manuals for joy.
They can’t fix anything we break.
They wonder why we never laugh
enough, why we don’t know God
is crazy for deep massage, and loves
to wail on His alto sax whenever they dance.
 
 

Love Song to the Alpacas of Solomon Lane  by Kenzie Allen

You know nothing of stars.
There is a low black river bordering the field,
and a sturdy little fence you arch across
with your precious skull and your ludicrous eyelashes
should a child approach with carrots or careless hands.
You don’t know the ocean, or the end of that road;
the bubbling cloud of ash thrown up by dirty bombs;
what a human can do to another human
or to anything else, really, that gets in its way;
the piles of glittering shards left over
from the jeweler’s perfect cut.
You don’t know the way they call us
gone, don’t know life as illegal.
You’ve no concept of the delicacy of a vein,
which countries’ lost water sends alfalfa to your bin.
If there is a hum overhead, some cold flying spider
crowned in a tiny green light and a single, relentless eye—
you need nothing of coordinates, demographics,
the outline of a district or illusion of safety,
just shears at the right time, a firm hand, a soft voice,
carrots, someone on the other end of a shovel.
The dense shag of your shoulders won’t hold
the heat of this city. How many years until you are gone;
your pen a water feature in another speculative neighborhood
with houses all bricked in the French style
starting at only one-point-five million and
I look for you driving lonely the nights I come back to Texas
as though from here is belonging.
Your jaws work idle, your little hooves muffle in dust.
Would that I could have lived happy in your oblivion,
not seen airplanes and mistaken them for comets,
not seen so much I learned to want or fear—
but teach me, sweet soft-lipped faces, sweet big dark eyes,
how to settle my restless legs beneath me,
to be quieted for what I can have.
Low on the horizon, that flickering light—
I know it’s not a supernova. A satellite will do.

To Look at Any Thing  by John Moffitt
                (Reprised)

To look at any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say,
“I have seen spring in these
Woods,” will not do—you must
Be the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes of
Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,
You must enter in
To the small silences between
The leaves,
You must take your time
And touch the very peace
They issue from.

Life on Earth   by Dorianne Laux

The odds are we should never have been born.
Not one of us. Not one in 400 trillion to be
exact. Only one among the 250 million
released in a flood of semen that glides
like a glassine limousine filled with tadpoles
of possible people, one of whom may
or may not be you, a being made of water
and blood, a creature with eyeballs and limbs
that end in fists, a you with all your particular
perfumes, the chords of your sinewy legs
singing as they form, your organs humming
and buzzing with new life, moonbeams
lighting up your brain’s gray coils,
the exquisite hills of your face, the human
toy your mother longs for, your father
yearns to hold, the unmistakable you
who will take your first breath, your first
step, bang a copper pot with a wooden spoon,
trace the lichen growing on a boulder you climb
to see the wild expanse of a field, the one
whose heart will yield to the yellow forsythia
named after William Forsyth—not the American
actor with piercing blue eyes, but the Scottish
botanist who discovered the buttery bells
on a highland hillside blooming
to beat the band, zigzagging down
an unknown Scottish slope. And those
are only a few of the things 
you will one day know, slowly chipping away
at your ignorance and doubt, you
who were born from ashes and will return
to ash. When you think you might be
through with this body and soul, look down
at an anthill or up at the stars, remember
your gambler chances, the bounty 
of good luck you were born for.

The World Without Us by Gloria Heffernan

I have seen it, you know. And it is beautiful. 
Blue sky alive with petrels and albatross.
Blue water swarming with iridescent krill.
A continent some think desolate 
brimming with life at its most resilient.
Eight million chinstrap penguins call Antarctica home,
but not a single politician, Starbucks, or bank.
If someone asked you to imagine 
the world without us,
you might think it empty and grim,
but the whales in Paradise Bay would beg to differ.
and the elephant seals lounging 
on the beach at Half-Moon Island
would snore contentedly and never miss us.

Love Song to the Alpacas of Solomon Lane
 by Kenzie Allen


You know nothing of stars.

There is a low black river bordering the field,

and a sturdy little fence you arch across

with your precious skull and your ludicrous eyelashes

should a child approach with carrots or careless hands.

You don’t know the ocean, or the end of that road;

the bubbling cloud of ash thrown up by dirty bombs;

what a human can do to another human

or to anything else, really, that gets in its way;

the piles of glittering shards left over

from the jeweler’s perfect cut.

You don’t know the way they call us

gone, don’t know life as illegal.

You’ve no concept of the delicacy of a vein,

which countries’ lost water sends alfalfa to your bin.

If there is a hum overhead, some cold flying spider

crowned in a tiny green light and a single, relentless eye—

you need nothing of coordinates, demographics,

the outline of a district or illusion of safety,

just shears at the right time, a firm hand, a soft voice,

carrots, someone on the other end of a shovel.

The dense shag of your shoulders won’t hold

the heat of this city. How many years until you are gone;

your pen a water feature in another speculative neighborhood

with houses all bricked in the French style

starting at only one-point-five million and

I look for you driving lonely the nights I come back to Texas

as though from here is belonging.

Your jaws work idle, your little hooves muffle in dust.

Would that I could have lived happy in your oblivion,

not seen airplanes and mistaken them for comets,

not seen so much I learned to want or fear—

but teach me, sweet soft-lipped faces, sweet big dark eyes,

how to settle my restless legs beneath me,

to be quieted for what I can have.

Low on the horizon, that flickering light—

I know it’s not a supernova. A satellite will do.

Soft Sling: A Ghazal  by Ellen Rowland
 
Last night I made a soft sling of my palms,
rested my head in the wing of my palms.
 
Like I used to as a child in a field,
butterflies like clouds that cling to my palms.
 
The want of innocent dreaming. What changed?
Allowed me to uncurl the string in my palms,
 
let it go like a kite, or a mother?
Grief leaves its dart, a sharp sting in my palms,
 
a welt I caress again and again
like a small wet bird, it sings in my palms.



 

Who Will Tell Them?  by Michael Simms

It turns out you can kill the earth,
Crack it open like an egg.
It turns out you can murder the sea,
Poison your own children
Without even thinking about it.

Goodbye passenger pigeon, once
So numerous men threw nets over trees
And fed you to pigs. Goodbye
Cuckoo bird who lays eggs
In the nests of strangers.

Goodbye elephant bird
Who frightened Sinbad.
Goodbye wigeon,
Curlew, lapwing, crake.
Goodbye Mascarene coot.
Sorry we never had a chance to meet.

Who knew you could wipe out
Everything? Who knew
You could crack the earth open
Like an egg? Who knew
The endless ocean
Was so small?

Right now, there are children playing on the shore.
There are children lying in hospital beds.
There are children trusting us.
Who will tell them what we’ve done?

Earth Shovel  by Dan Albergotti

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us … a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam … the only home we’ve ever known.
—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (1994)
 
Drill, baby, drill!
—Michael Steele, 2008 Republican National Convention
 
Photographed from 18,000 miles in 1972, Earth had the look
of a marble, or so people said. Eighteen years later, we shot it again,
this time from 3.7 billion miles when Voyager 1, still traveling at 
40,000 miles per hour, was nearly done with this solar system that 
occupies a tiny bit of real estate in the known universe. A dot 
is what we called it then, pale and blue. A pinprick that’s 
difficult to make out against its black backdrop of void. Here
we are, on that dot, waving goodbye to Voyager 1. And that’s 
that, I suppose. Now, 28 years later and five miles from home,
huge earth movers are clawing at the ground at a site that’s 
being prepped. When we ask what for, no one can tell us.
The sound of the heavy machinery has already become a 
curtain of ambient noise dropped over our days. When a mote
of some black substance swirls in the light-gray glass of 
water I pour from the sink, I shrug. The porch is covered in dust.
I drive my car by the grace of plants and animals suspended 
in the Earth’s crust for a hundred million years, cooked in
a sort of clay pot by pressure and heat. But that’s about to be a 
chapter of the past. Fifty or sixty years at most. By then a sunbeam
will power our cars and hoverbikes. Or simply fall on our ashes. The 
thing about the universe is that it seems infinite, but really it’s only 
a ceaseless series of extinctions. I think about that on the drive home. 
Over five billion species have been here. 99.9 percent are gone. We’ve
been here about an hour on Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar. Have you ever 
thought about that? Last week a guy at the bar said, I ain’t known 
about none of that. All I know’s we’ll have plenty of oil if we just drill 
down deep enough. Today two friends showed me their new baby.
They were happy, as if they expect a world for her. This is not a drill.