All along this strand opposite Holy Island

Pebbles fit softly in the palm of my  hand.

Spent their eternity rolling on the floors of seas

Others, more ragged in texture, drag themselves

Through sand – desperate for the solidity of land.

Fossils cling to rocks, embedded trilobites, snail

Swirls, embossed in rock – all had lived

In the Jurassic or Cretaceous, fought for food,

Driven to reproduce. Why? So that aeons later

A mere virus can bring mankind to its knees?

Such wobbly evolutionary overlaps quickly dispose

Of those who see a straight trajectory into the future.

And give credence to those who saw, and still see, in the star of Bethlehem

A supernova, that wiped out the most advanced civilization ever known.