A Place Once Called Earth

Kate Wolf: Like a River

Long ago, when an early galaxy began to pour light out into the surrounding darkness, no witness could have known that billions of years later some remote clumps
of rock and metal, ice and organic
molecules would fall together to make a place called Earth; or that life would arise and thinking beings evolve who would one day capture a little of that galactic light, and try to puzzle out what had sent it on its way. And after the earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it's burned to a crisp,
or even swallowed by the Sun,
there will be other worlds
and stars and galaxies
coming into being --
and they will know nothing
of a place once called Earth.
--Carl Sagan