"Fast-forward even farther into the future and the Milky Way

and its neighbors will have collapsed to form a gaping black hole."

        National Geographic News, October 28, 2010

For now we stay and the stars rush away.

There is here where sand gently slopes

To the slow swell of the sea, each keeping

The other at bay, pendulous give and take,

Equilibrium of the water's soft surge and

The drifting tidal shiftings of the dunes.

But I have been where the sea throws

Itself in roar and rearing against sheer

Granite cliffs, where the land rises up

In constant contention against where

The sea would go, as though creation

Were even now not a settled thing but

Endless negotiation and negation, how

Now and then and forever it is motion

That will find the faults and fissures in

The immoveable until it too moves, fails

And falls, resolves, becomes the sea itself

In its long returning, back to the beginning.