Author: Steven Desch
Year: 2023
Award: st Place
The Milky Way,
a spiral arm:
collapsing gas,
it's getting warm...
Here stars are born,
they age and burst.
They're not the last,
and not the first.
Within this arm,
for gigayears,
the stars will form;
some disappear,
but leave a trace
for stars to come,
from oxygen
to curium
and isotopes
thrown in the gas,
enriching it
as eons pass.
Eight billion years
of to-and-fro.
About five billion
years ago.
a yellow star
formed from this foam,
with planets, even
one called Home.
And in the rocks
around this Sun,
a distant tale
of stars now done,
of isotopes
that have decayed,
and atoms that
the stars once made
quickly scribbled,
for us to reach,
in rocks on a
galactic beach,
in a bottle,
washed up on shore:
a note from stars
that are no more.