The Space Rock

Naushin Raheema

Roaming Earth for a few billion years,
I came from a distant future to keep an eye on the past
I was tasked with figuring out how big ancient space rocks were.
My planet was roughly two trillion away from earth.
Space rocks can hardly hit them.
I watched as boulders from orbit worked on the Earth's landscape by crashing onto it,
New species evolving everywhere.
It was at this point that I began making purely speculative measurements 
What would they do?
I delighted in watching T. Rex devour others. 
Tragically, he and his cronies were wiped away as well.
I measured the rock's pace and the ensuing evolutionary leap.
“I am never going to live to see the future” 
That's what I said to a space rock twice as bigger than the earth.
She departed without a goodbye, though I
waited for her, to measure her arrival.
As I watched the mortals starting fire,
Tame wild but gentle dogs, eat and do weird stuff.
That was a bit over the top for me.
Random hits did not stop life from rebounding.
For eons, I saw Earth's inhabitants build and destroy.
Oh boy! I knew planet blue was doomed from the start
I grew accustomed and forgot home. 
My burning passion to measure their end faded away.
As years passed, I could see things diminishing.
Tremors commenced, oceans dancing to the rhythm of the end.
I started my measurements again.
Knowing that she will return to destroy the cosmos, 
I did not return home.
I knew my home, this is it.
By and by she came with all her grace for me
Maybe the space rock was in love with me after all.

The Science

This poem is narrated by an entity (of an unspecified nature) which has lived on Earth from the beginning. This entity arrives from another planet from a distant future. The entity is assigned with a task to measure the asteroids that might hit the Earth and has the possibility to hit their planet. Understanding the size of the asteroid would be helpful for them to cook up a plan. In the poem, nature takes a calculated risk in producing homo sapiens and hypothesized what the superior species on Earth (humans) might do. This poem is also based on theories of how the end of the world might be caused by ‘space rocks’ i.e., asteroids. The entity stops predicting the future out of boredom and pessimism about how the Earth seemed to be changing for the worse day-by-day. It ends up falling in love with the space rock and waits for her to take him along. By the end of the poem, the asteroid has ended everything once and for all. This poem speaks to the cycles of creation and destruction on Earth, as well as how humanity cannot always be on the winning side of this conflict.

The Poet

Naushin Raheema lives in a city called Madurai, in India. She is an impassioned science writer, covering various aspects of science in her writings. Apart from science, Naushin loves writing apocalypse and elegy poetry. She does art journaling during her free time. Naushin aspires to do a doctorate in marine biology.

Next poem: Ballistics by Neil Philip Young