Everything in the world – the iron in our blood, the oxygen we breath, the silicon in our computers are ultimately atoms. Most kinds of atoms are made when stars explode in what scientists term a supernova. So each time we take a breath, we’re actually inhaling atoms forged in the interior of burning stars and then propelled across the Milky Way before reaching us.
Ode to the Supernova
In one blinding flare
you spilled your golden beans
filling the universe with its store
of neutrons, iron, and fat elements,
the earth with its embarrassment of riches.
Whenever I look up the sky
that presides over this wonder,
I see a moon’s worth of gold
and a body’s worth of ravishing red rivers
streaming inside me.
That is why, the stars and I –
we call each other, stars.