Roy Gray is a writer and scientist who lives in Macclesfield, Cheshire, UK. The visual version of this poem was published in Physics World (the journal of the Institute of Physics) in October 1995. Dark Planet is designed and edited by Lucy A. Snyder. If you spot any errors, or if you have any comments, please contact her at lusnyde@cyberus.ca. All materials copyright 1996-1998 by their respective creators. No stories, articles, poems or images from this webzine may be posted or published without the written consent of their creator(s).

Towards Darwin by Roy Gray Solitary H, far from Van der Vaals, atomic Hydrogen smattered through space. Only gravity calls. Aeons pass, and more. Singlet states become pairs smug, cool, molecules. The super womb of Hydrogen stirs; long, mazy swirls. Aeons pass, and more. Gravity strikes millimetres per millennium, or less. Invisibly warping space/time for those on the shoulders of Einstein. Aeons pass, and more. Matter, mass, Hydrogen crowing to the universe from all these gravid nebulae at 1.4 billion hertz. Aeons pass, in a flash. Distant goldmines, distant times, neutrinos trail the story. Set telescopes to trawl the skys capturing a final fury. Revealing to our wondering eyes that Maxwell's war with Newton's law let gravity play the aces. A sudden collapse at iron core rends the curtain open for; the hurricane of neutrons, the tidal wave of light. Mendeleyev's children, supernova ejaculate. Seconds pass, slowly. Shockwaves expand, kilometres per millisecond, and more. Then condensations abound where, one day, stars will found. Ions mass, and charge. Turbulence and motion plough the cloud of gas following the shockfronts sowing seeds of mass. Aeons parse. Alphabet stew gestates, elements in the mix. Under gravity's gentle teasing inchoate masses bloom as discs. More millennia pass These are matter's domain, where hearts contract out coalescing under Newton's reign. To slow their pirouette they shed angular momentum as encircling torii. While deep within Hydrogen fuses to Helium and begins the long fight to confine Maxwell's self raising power. Secrets under swathes of plasma until Burbidges, Hoyle and Fowler. While Spin is the refugee camping in the petals where planets are conceived. At Bodian intervals? Under Early embers, first dawn. Red are the new infant's cries. The warming glow that signifies a sun is born.