Dark Matter

We sit on springy summer grass
looking up, not really knowing what we see
Systems, star clusters, galaxies
Other Earths
Invisible to the nude eye
Yet corporeal all the same

Many barren, devoid of the stir of life
No wind, not even air
Many scorching deserts of despair
Icy tundras on still others
Too dark to bear the fruit of life

One in a billion, like our own maybe
Other manifestations of nature, full of creatures
Some bustling, lively cities
Still others just beginning
The first few slow, tranquil steps
Toward their first inhabitants

Some perhaps at their climaxes
Still lack the sentient eye to observe them
Will maybe never know the hand of progress
Or be understood by the simplest mind
But stay only within that solitude, a cycle of nature pleasing herself
Never to feel the interference of the curious

Those which our own neighbors seem to state are few,
Those blessed of blessed, those able ones
The luckiest of all planets, one might say
To hold not only life in their very hands
But knowledge

Those intelligent, gleaming eyes of keen observers
Who will formulate cultures based on their planetary hosts
They create the passion of life
The need for exploration
The need to know
Another place like our own exists
To know we are not a fluke of science, but a necessity
To break our isolation
And join hands with our unknown brothers and sisters
To be free