13 Billion Years of Poetry

Warning it's long!

Around 13 billion years ago
The Big Bang was about to blow
It would have been a splendid show

With ferocious force and enormous might
It exploded at the speed of light
Time and space and matter did form
And hence the universe was born

It almost shares the same birthday
As our galaxy the Milky Way
For that's the age of it's oldest star
If you care to look back that far

The Milky Way boasts 400 billion lights
That glow and flicker in the sky at night
How big it is from left to right
The number is too large to write

And if you care to further listen
We'll cross now to our solar system

9 planets made from rock and gas
Solaris makes up most it's mass
They all revolve around the sun
It's been that way since it begun
There's too much here to talk about
So lets consider this section done

We'll segue now to Mother Earth
And cogitate about her worth
She's 25,000 miles in girth
And molten hot ever since her birth

She'll collide with another planet soon
The resulting dust will form her moon
Life won't exist there for a while
Her atmosphere's too volatile

As the big rock cooled and slowed in motion
Her gases condensed and formed the oceans
The moon was so near in the sky
It created waves 1000 feet high

Meteoroids flew in from space
To bombard the globe at a relentless pace
Craters formed all over the place
She ended up with a pock marked face

Thanks to an amazing cataclysm
We now have a single celled organism  
Which incubated In a primordial soup
From amino acids and all kinds of goop

And just a short time after this
Bacteria used photosynthesis
And we should really be thanking them
For the massive influx of oxygen

This also made conditions rife
For the formation of multicellular life
That with it brought another function
We know as sexual reproduction

Arachnids and crustaceans we now see
That's Spiders and crabs to you and me
Their innards consist of a kind of gelatin
Protected by their exoskeleton

But now life pauses it's occupation
Due to total global glaciation
In the history books we're told
At this point earth got far too cold

Once the giant snowball thawed
A notable point on the fossil record
There came to be a commotion in the ocean
An event called the Cambrian explosion

With plenty of air and food to nourish
Life forms really began to flourish
Oxygen became an important player
As it helped to create the ozone layer

Ozone prevented ultraviolet radiation
And afforded  possibility for land colonization
Plants and fungi start the first invasion
They add more oxygen into the equation

An eruption of insects and plants with seeds
To help their lineage succeed
It was a viable plan indeed
From giant trees to the humble weed

A mass extinction is what we next discover
It took 30 million years to completely recover
Fish grew teeth and devoured each other
They may have even eaten their own brother or mother

Amphibians evolved and with a food source on hand
We began seeing plant eating lizards on land
They grew large to keep up with their diet demand
Even though eating grass was rather bland

Animals, Birds, Mammals and Flowers
Flesh eating lizards now vie for power
Predators were powerful and became apex
From Raptors to the vicious super sized T Rex

All of the species have their own distinction
But now dinosaurs are heading for a mass extinction

A giant meteor coming in from the sky?
Maybe but really no one truly knew why
The whole eradication has us quite perplexed
Here one day then gone the next

Next up is a subject of great debates
Whether man descended from the beasts call Great Apes

Orangutans, Gorillas and the Chimpanzees
Live in groups and pick each others backs for fleas
Express a state of anger by showing off their teeth
Run remarkably fast on their hands and feet
But that doesn't sound like the behavior of you and me

We share 98% of our DNA with the Chimpanzees
Have a hand with an opposable thumb used to grip and squeeze
Maintain a social structure with relative ease
And that's probably why we're all grouped under the same species

So we conclude this little section with the rest of our Homo Friends
Erectus, Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens

We can't deny the truth it's in the science that we're seeing
From single cells to monkeys and then into human beings

Let's begin with Homo Sapiens
Human Beings is their common name
They made a great achievement by harnessing the flame

Humans mastered fire and It helped them with their plight
Quarry they could cook with it
Providing warmth and light at night

The human's greatest asset was the ability to think
And if they had a problem they could find the missing link
They were plunged into the ice age it nearly pushed them to the brink
So devastatingly cold it almost made them all extinct

They clothed themselves in animal skin
And Huddle close to next of kin
To keep their bodies warm therein

Tools and weapons from chips of stone
Ivory , Antler and animal bone
A spear made from a wooden stake
One day soon a Harpoon they'll make

In time the humans had a skill in their hand
Agriculture and the ability to cultivate land
This doesn't mean that hunting really ever stops
It's just supplemented easily by growing different crops

Humans began to multiply at a rapid pace
Settlements were popping up all over the place
Not only were they Human Beings but now the Human Race
And to think that all this started from an explosion out in space

Next to come was pottery and a device they called the wheel
An since their crops were yielding more it helped them a great deal

A calendar was invented next to count the days in time
Writing is created to express a written line
Humans could now dictate exactly what was on their mind

People begin to work their land
To build great Pyramids in the sand

The Man began to gaze upon stars
And chart the planets like Venus and Mars

Humans craft a circle of stone and each one weighs a tonne
To this day we're left wondering precisely how it was done

We now invent the Alphabet
It seems we needed a character set
Maybe so we can debate
The written laws we now create

The torch will burn and light the flames
For the first ever Olympic Games

Religion arrives man starts to pray
We even do the same today
Mathematics jumps into the fray
We calculate lots of things this way

The father of medicine is born
The books of the old testament form

A great wall to stop invading foe
An entire nation it will enclose
Many died while building it
They'll rest in peace inside it though

A great leader conquers Gaul
But for him there comes a fall
Before he becomes eternally mute
He's said to utter Et Tu Brute?

Now we see a gods son born
Soon he'll don a crown of thorn
The people then will feel a loss
Once he's nailed upon a cross

Two millennium have passed since then
A great many thing involved with them

As we pass this point I feel I oughta
Name but a few in no particular order

From war to famine and the spread of disease
Construction of great monuments and holes in cheese

The great invention of film and cartoon
Landing a module of men on the moon

The silicone chip an amazing creation
Chewbacca and R2 caused quite a sensation

Ships in a harbor are surprised by the Japs
UFO's at Roswell kept under wraps

Princess Dianna and her final hours
September 11th the demise of two towers

The discovery of Flemings Penicillin from mold
A blue pill to help men when they grow too old

A Byzantine emperor built beautiful churches
While rulers of dynasties fell from their perches

The Americas kick off a revolutionary starter
King John pondered the Magna Carta

Turning night into day from a switch that we flick
Devastation from the Bubonic Plague pandemic

A man in a jet flying faster than sound
Telephones without wires turned the world upside down

Machines with rays that can photograph bones
The NASDAQ, All Ordinaries and the Dow Jones

Christmas is celebrated and has people gifting
While earthquakes destroy cities from tectonic shifting

A country fell deep into communist rule
The graphite pencil invention was a marvelous tool

Countries revolutionized by industrial might
A bird made of wood and cloth began to take flight

Who would have thought when we began to make fire
We 'd end up sending packets of data down a wire

The steam engine and a Small Pox vaccine
Textiles created from a Wool Carding machine

So as you can see I could fill this whole page
With inventions an events that occurred in this age

Alas I must bring this entire topic to an end
I suspect I'm beginning to bore you my friend
It's certainly driving my mind around the bend

I understand that there is much I could add
I'd be here for a billion years more if I had

If you ever wonder how did we get here today
It began with an explosion a great distance away
As we sit here this moment we could never know
What would come of this mighty event long ago

Author's Note

More goop from the soup. Add a pinch of salt. Bon appetit!