NATURE Poem: Are the Stars Out Tonight?, by Richard Bell

Do they watch us with a billion blinking eyes?
As if our existence is too much for them to comprehend.

Do they stare in gaping awe and marvel at the only other beings in the
universe who can look back at them and wonder?

Do the stars count us? Do they number and name us? Group us together in
vague shapes and tell stories of our creation like constellations?

Is there anything out there with eyes to see us and a heart to love us?

Will some higher being pity us enough to save us from ourselves? Our own
extinction? Surely we must be on someone s endangered species list.

I want with all my heart to believe the stars are a promise of our future.
Some great god s gift to us, a glimpse of what we may become.

I fear they may just be the memory of someone else s past, echos of
lives once lived. Glimmering fragmented dreams dimming. After all even
light fades away. Even a star has an end.

I suspect both may be true and all that remains of anything is a glimmer,
a shadow then darkness, lost within the expanding void between of suns.