Robin Helweg-Larsen

Bubbles

The Earth’s a pot of water on the range,
and nothing happens for a billion years;
then as the water heats, things start to change
and movement - formless, unaware - appears.
Next the first tiny bubbles start to form,
brains self-assembling, they form, collapse,
form and collapse in water barely warm,
minds that start yearning for some Great Perhaps.
They grow, they start to rise, still fade away
while dreaming of a life that will not fail;
and this is humans as we are today,
starting to boil up from this mortal jail
to break into the vastly bigger air…
unknowing where steam goes, what happens there.

Anglo-Danish by birth but Bahamian by upbringing, Robin Helweg-Larsen has been published in Alabama Literary Review, Allegro, Ambit, Amsterdam Quarterly, Pulsebeat and other international journals. He is Series Editor for Sampson Low’s ‘Potcake Chapbooks – Form in Formless Times’, and blogs at formalverse.com from his hometown of Governor’s Harbour.