My rock is warm
My seaweed-filled belly is sleepy
The waves lap in and out
The Sun pulls me through her.

She grew the seaweed and warmed the rock
She drenched me in peaceful sleep
And she told me of when she was young
Before I was hatched, before the Earth was born.

“I was a remnant of starlight,” she says, “Forgotten in a milky spiral.
Quiet hydrogen reef, glowing, breathing cloud.
I could have lived through eternity
Never wanting more, content in a galactic ocean.

Beyond my horizon was Mother Star.
She was the brightest near me,
An island of blue light, filling my aloneness.
We hung in forever together.

I was simple and unformed,
One-moon atoms hanging in space.
I knew nothing of Mother Star's children
Or that I was about to be born.

My birth ripped her apart.

Forever stopped
The island incandesced into a flash
That filled the universe
And I collapsed under her wave.

Chaos flew by
Worlds were disappeared
Their atoms whirling through me
But all I heard was singing.

My heart burst into light
Atoms of worlds formed new worlds around me
Oceans filled
Life began.

And I knew what Mother Star had known.
Other worlds, other lives, she grew them.
Beings of consciousness in the precious universe
Alive because of her.

On her worlds, were there turtles
Swimming through bright-lit sea grass,
Laughing gulls riding on currents,
Iguanas warming on rocks?

This must have been.
They felt her love as their worlds turned into night.

Hatchling turtles broke through the sand,
Followed her silver light to the sea,
The light splashed the waves onto rocks
Where iguanas gazed at the moon.”

The Sun's story grew silent
Imagining the worlds of Mother Star.
I thought of them too
And drifted into sleep, wondering,

When their worlds ended
I hope they knew
They live in us.

(from Poetry by the Iguana)