Elegy MMXXIV

Earth has more trees than all the stars in the milky way,
three trillion compared to four hundred million stars.
Trees produce twenty-eight percent of oxygen on Earth.

Miniscule marine plants called phytoplankton produce over
fifty percent of the world’s oxygen.

It rains diamonds on Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn,
Romans and Greeks believed diamonds were tears
cried by the gods
or splinters from falling stars.

On a quantum level, everything is made of stardust.

A cloud can be as heavy as a million pounds
but silver linings can't pay for food

and all the science in the world
can't mend a broken fractured planet.