Fourteen billion years ago, give or take,
A point exploded, universe to make.
Pushed outward at a frightful pace,
Strewed hot particles in empty space.

Blossom cooled, velocity slowed,
Galaxies in eddy currents showed.
Stars formed from gas with spin,
Burned, and exploded yet again.

Time arrow pointing with the spread,
The past recorded, future unread,
Random uncertainty in control,
Stardust here, there a black hole.

Universe at five billion years old,
Spawned stars of a different mold.
Recycled some matter to a yellow star,
With masses orbiting near and far.

Cooling, condensed, gave planets’ birth,
The third one out we call the earth.
A couple of billion more years to wait
Before molecule clusters’d replicate.

If with others they best competed,
They lived, else were defeated.
So evolution was established fact,
Life with diversity got into the act.

Three billion more for the human race
To rise to its feet, destiny to face.
On history its mind ever feeding,
Eventually learned all the preceding.

To anticipate cosmological events
Asked questions of discovered hints
Of the beginning of all he could see,
And given time, would cease to be.

Always in his knowledge quest,
Assigned to God all yet to test,
Holding in trust what only He knows,
‘Til wrested free as capacity grows.

So looking ahead from big bang’s pop,
Expansion slows but we won’t see it stop,
For we’ll be gone -- it’s more than a hunch --
As time reverses with a contractive crunch

That gravitates all matter to infinite mass,
Breaks a phase barrier, turns to gas
And violently explodes -- another universe,
With unique physics, for better or worse.

Cosmos convulses in diastolic spasm,
On either side of a singularity chasm,
Cycling time both forward and back,
God’s heart pumping right on track!

Explosion, expansion, crunching contraction,
The beat goes on with metered action.
Few hints as to why it should pound,
Call it “God’s Pulse” ‘til the reason’s found.

© 2003 R. Leland Waldrip