Robin dawn

Photo ©European Southern Observatory

Robin dawn

The last ship left with its huddled masses for another solar system, abandoning their planet Earth, sucked dry now and arid. When the old sun set for the last time, Earth span with no centre to hold her, span in the darkness for more lonely years, until the cold cracked her to the core, and her last sigh froze in the glacial cold. Her last sigh froze, her core cracked, but not her heart. Something insubstantial remained out of the reach of despair, like pale hands, timid and strong, a trembling, shimmering veil of the green and gold and blue threads of life.

In the silence and the darkness, the spinning earth felt a jolt, and a tremor ran through the fissured soil and the rock. A new star was calling across the universe. Slowly, then faster, night followed day followed night, and the spinning of Earth was an answering. So fast and so far, the great cold rock followed the star-call, spinning eagerly, slicking off the darkness to let flakes of ice peel away, glittering like shooting stars. Faster and further, she was pulled by the young star that pulsed brighter with every parsec the earth covered.

The young star enfolded Earth in a magnetic embrace, and she locked into her new orbit. Star-fire blazed, and the first dawn broke in all the hues the old world had ever know. All the blues and greens and golds of the weave of life glowed, more vibrant than ever before, washed clean by the winds of space and warmed by the power of the young star. The ice melted, the soil warmed and shivered with pleasure, sifting and shifting seeds and roots.

Seeds set, swelled and sent out inquiring shoots. In deep burrows and earths, in river mud and deep sea sand, life stretched. Nests with cold eggs basked in the growing heat, and in the heart of a jungle of dry brambles, eggs hatched. Later, soon, when the first leaves unfurled, green and tender, a brown bird with a red throat shook out his feathers and began his song, the first song in the new world that said, winter is over.