Under the faucet's fractal drip
A community of microbes
Blunt-tipped but dendritic
Hierarchical but disordered
Flourished for many moments

Are we as fleeting as these
Ephemerae, relatively speaking,
Satellites of ice and stone
Versus organic systems splitting
And ending along time's arrow?

Mercury's orbit owns chaotic elements
Making it the least stable of the worlds;
Far-flung computer projections
Predict eventual sunward-plummet
Or outward exit.
Void surrounds these events.

What is the length of a human life time?
How many ticks of the cosmic clock?
How many degrees/minutes/seconds
Of our Galaxy's arc of rotation?
When we come round once more
Some 30 million years more-or-less hence
Arriving home again, will we recognize
The place as if for the first time?

More likely extinct, our DNA world
Forgotten as a missing link
Between nothing and nowhere,
Earth populated by twittering birds

Critters decanted somewhere
Near Andromeda or beyond
Built using some instructions
More reproducible than
Mutable organic acids,
Of what flesh-and-metal materials?

They'll still speak with similar tongues
Once 30 million yrs have fled, but
What will they have
To say for themselves?