Mayflies

How petty the affairs of men,
How trivial they are,
Upon their mote spun deep in space
Round some forgotten star.

One of a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy unknown,
Yet in the vastness they call space
Quite frankly, all alone.

A hundred billion galaxies
In a universe unnamed,
And countless universes too
By spacetime fabric framed.

Though brutish human lives are short,
Like mayflies they assay
To cram their whole existence in
One single cosmic day.

How impudent! What hubris!
To think that they are kings
Not only of the earth, but of,
Creation - of all things!

Yet what a day those mayflies live,
They frolic, feast and breed
As if these paltry given hours
Were all the time they need.

They struggle to improve themselves,
They fill their lives with awe,
They contemplate the universe,
Decipher cosmic law,

They live to love, they love to learn,
They learn to laugh and sing.
In their small niche of time and space
The cosmos surely ring.

For hundreds of parsecs around
Space lies but cold and dark,
Yet there, on that unlikely speck,
Life's truly left it's mark!

So live and love and mayflies, build,
For though your lives be short,
Together you may yet transcend
Your little fly resort...