There are
one hundred billion galaxies
according to astronomers
an approximation in the observable universe and it is expanding!
Sun has five billion years left
before burning out
earth will die then too
if humans don’t
annihilate it first.

We know nothing
of orbiting gracefully
as do the planets.

What if:
Saturn hated Mercury
and Mars hated Neptune
and Venus hated Jupiter
and Uranus hated Pluto
and they burned and banned and berated
and bombed and gassed and tortured
and beheaded each other,
even their many moons
and stars, even their
dwarf stars?

There goes the Milky Way
or the Via Lactea,
the Romans would say.
Maybe somewhere out there
in another galaxy
one of the other one hundred billion,
the inhabitants of one lone planet
like busy tiny kind ants
will learn mutual
gravitation.