Into the Dark

Everyone's falling into the dark,
Falling and fading into the dark.
It swallows us up, it drinks up our spark:
We're falling into the dark.

The blackness fills infinity;
We're only motes that rise and flare.
A moment's all we have to glow,
Then we're falling into the dark.

Some sputter ere they leave the ground,
Others rise and hang and hang,
While their fellows fall away
Into the hungry dark.

At last the void will claim us all:
The greatest fireworks show must close.
The next generation's rising now—
But the darkness is already waiting.

—San Diego, California
2003