Life waits for
Dawn
To rise and go about
Life's needs
Through heat and cold, snow and grass and shade of tropics
Nesting, resting in midst of
Day,
Resumes the toil till
Birdsong of evening tells of
Dusk bringing nightfall.
Life steals a look up at
Starry firmament, pausing for a moment stolen from
Life's needs, to ponder the heavens above
And then settles down by fireside
Storytelling begins from old to young
So begins history, builds up through millennia.
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Myriad stars above, but only one Sun,
Most can see
Heat of desert makes those avoid the Sun,
Those that travel by Moon's light or
That of other stellar lights
Nordic lands look up, and find
One star that seems never moving
They can navigate oceans and
Conquer the world, all because of this
One fixed star
So Nordic lands swear by the fixed stars, after they have
Known variations in Sun's travels that
Make it imperative they find another one
To steer their ships by.
Deserts stand by the Moon, they need the light and cool
And the North Star is too far down,
Firmament too volatile to be guided by that one
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Tropics are comfortable, as long as forests last and shade and waters
Sun rises every day in East, and
Day is normally not that short, ever,
Multitude of stars passing from East to West,
All too normal,
And yes, there is a north star, but
Not that necessary to fixate on, even for time
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Funny, why and when do wars begin, Tropics have lost
All trace
Perhaps the only why was
Primitive need to promote one's own reproduction,
End that of others
But the Deserts invade in name of night,
Nordics in name of North Star,
Sun and Moon and all the stars of
Tropics Firmament are
Known to them
They accuse the Tropics of
Not favouring one,
Worshiping all three hundred and thirty million known
And accepting the two preferred by the invaders too!
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South is not known much until then, and
When it is known
Life has lost track of why the preference for
One Stellar Body
Began at
Dawn of Time
But if someone is looking up
From a Southern continent,
Having travelled or migrated from
Nordic Latitudes
They do know,
The Firmament is the same, and yet
Vastly different enough
Disorienting
Just as Nordic Latitudes are for Tropical traveller
And Deserts drive both crazy with
Heat unrelenting
.......................................................................................
When would someone standing beneath a
Southern continent's Firmament
Know with a small revelation
It is the same Firmament,
And yes, there are trillions of stars, more than
Life can see or count or estimate
And they are all stars,
Just like the North star, or like
One on the various green flags!
When would Life know
It isn't real, flinging mud or death
At Life in other lands
In the name of one's own preferred
Star by any name!
............................................................................................
Stars meanwhile
Look down and smile at
Life that stakes claims by
This star or that
They don't even wonder if
Life will know
The stars, the Firmament
Belong to nothing below
Only the
Blue Heaven that
Envelops Earth
Belongs to Earth
For above that Blue
Space is all dark,
Stars clear through day and night
Clouds below, and
Life at mercy of
Mind's Tools
For air too is
Earth's own!
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