Our Existence on Earth

1. Existence

We strayed into the void too high to keep
direction. Weight of stars has pulled us out
Our ship has shifted into unknown deep
We're so far beyond any track or route

I remember home, it's the fireplace,
the vital center point, the light, the sun
Where I'd met the shape of your eyes, your face
on that third world where we had once begun

We spiraled in crescendo of ascent
No helping hands we found on desert worlds
We breathe still but soon all our strength is spent
Oh mother hearth, its blooms and herds and birds

My hand clasped yours; we whispered of enough
The cold of space is there with its embrace
Our lungs will soon release our final puff
No more infinity of love and grace

Yet our hope still hovers in the distance
Of unknown stranger's starborn assistance
Our continued miracle existence

2. Stranger

We are an island, here, there, you and me
A ship adrift with self-sufficient air
But now the end; there's nothing left to see
We join, prepare to say our final prayer

The stars are blinking out; I know it's me
I know, I know, this ship has brought us far
But we waited long enough and we agree
no journey left for yet another star

But often islands in the shoals of space
they hide an archipelago of strange
and from their shores they came to here, this place
Our fortunes turned with chance, this sudden change

I hold your hand and watch the stranger's ship
that has appeared when all was thought and lost
My heartbeat leaps, I cry, I jump and skip
The other warms and melts down all our frost

We are not alone and we never were
If life is here it elsewhere must occur
Love in another heart can also stir

3. Walls

A stranger's eyes bear into me; look back
Their orbs are dark, the skin around has cracked
Some words I do not speak blown from air sac
I grasp for any sense in fluting abstract

We hear them speak and do not understand
Among strangers here we are, you and me
On this humid world, in this distant land
and they don't know at all what we could be

I wonder what they see, what they discuss
Humans not, but something shared together
For still they took us in and cared for us
Do they understand you, me, our tether?

I feel your shoulder firm beneath my hand
This is not our home, this world of thunder
But those two strangers, see how close they stand?
I look into your eyes, and I wonder

I know that no one knows us here at all
It's them and us; between a shadowed wall
But now I think perhaps it's not as tall

4. Earth

I am so far from home with you, the view
is nebulas and threads of gleaming stars
The clouds of Earth, so white against the blue
are far, and are not now or ever ours

I tell you that I'm treading water too
and barely gulping air, and barely there
You told me that I danced and that I flew
You knew it when I was not yet aware

I turned to see your eyes then touched your lips
What is the Earth, what does it mean to us?
Why seek our way to home on shoals of ships
when home is you, the rest superfluous

Thunder cracks but we shelter in the rain
This place they will have never heard of us
The pull of home is ache, persistent pain
And here they never heard at all of us

Hey you, I'm barely gathered, barely whole
But Earth is not a home, it is our goal
And Earth is not a place, it is your soul