I wake to see a cardinal¹ in our white crape myrtle. My eye aches. Bees celebrate morning come with their dynamo-hum around a froth of bloom.

    Though presently it‘s paradise for the bees，noon will reach ninety-nine degrees. Le vierge， le vivace et le bel aujourd’ hui will stultify² hope in ennui³.

    I watched Raging Planet on TV. Earth‘s orbit around the sun appears to alter every hundred thousand years.

    Each thirty million years，mass extinctions attend Earth‘s traverse of the galactic plane.

    The asteroid⁴ rain that cratered⁵ the moon returns， brings species‘ deaths.

    In the Hudson Bay region of Quebec，the Laurentide ice sheet only a geological eye-blink ago lay two miles thick.

    Disasters preceded us， like violent parents.

    Pangaea‘s fragmenting land mass drowned origins like lost Atlantis：an enigma⁶ for consciousness.

    These continents will re-collide in their rock-bending tectonic dance，as once before Tyrannosaurus died.

    So change continues by chance，as if meaningless—granite to sand，sand to sandstone， sandstone to sand.

    In five billion years， the sun will expand，to Venus and Mars， then end planet Earth. The hydrangea blooms its dry blue， burns a brown lavender.

    Earth whirls in space and August comes—this slanted⁸ light my calendar.

    As I water the pink phlox， I wonder what use there is for a world of matter—why the universe exploding into being invents night and star-incandesence？

    We are the part of it that feels it，thinks it， seeing this time in its slant⁷ on bloom with our physical brains that change it as they sense it.

    We become. We hum a story as tune，in sonata⁹ form that runes this sphinx- riddle¹⁰ sequence as notes that the pharynx fluctuates， to mean.

    So “This Nearly Was Mine” assuages，braced against old loss and war.

    Emile de Becque sounds rich with knowledge of children and love， before