National Geographic: Rhythms of Life Page #4

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Soon, all their preparations

will be rewarded.

The wet, the season of the rains

is coming at last.

From deep in their shadowy castles,

colonies of termites rouse

to the reveille.

One storm brings another,

a rain of flying termites.

They take to the air by the millions,

in the quest to found new colonies

in rain-softened soil.

And as always, the rhythms of one

life mesh and turn with others.

Wide-eyed possums in the trees,

and bandicoots on the ground below,

end the fasting of the dry months

with a welcome late-night feast.

At the end of their migration,

termites shed their now useless wings.

Many will fail to ever find a mate

and burrow safely underground.

With the coming of daylight, there

will be others to join the feast.

Conservative no more, the

frill-necked lizard becomes a glutton,

storing up protein for

the breeding time to come.

But it may face competition

for the spoils.

Undaunted, the lizard takes his fill,

working alone.

The green ants do it differently,

working together in groups.

Both species tend to the harvest with

a persistence that is single minded.

Little disturbs the teamwork of ants.

They scavenge night and day,

dry or wet.

At the peak of the rainy season,

the storms are now more than

most animals might care to see.

But their only choice

is to wait the cycle out.

Like the rhythm of the tides,

the rolling seasons of wet and dry

shape life for every plant

and animal on this land.

Not one of them can stop the rain,

or light the black of night,

no more than the fish command

the seas to rise and fall.

One creature only dares

to fight the night

the bold and restless dreamer

hunter, builder, man.

But even in our cars and castles,

we submit to the rhythms of the earth.

Dawn and the sun summons us to work.

We swarm like schools of fish

to the cities,

flashing to feed and mingle

on the reef.

Beneath the canopy of urban forests,

we hunt and gather

what we need to live.

And dusk still calls us home again

a flock of birds

returning to the roost.

But over the millennia,

we have learned

how to fight the darkness

with fires of our own design.

We strain against the boundaries,

reshaping the border

between night and day.

We create our own complex orbits,

drawn to the sky

and the distant heavens.

Yet finally,

for all our powers and wisdom

man is still just a player

on a vast stage.

Hour by hour, year by year,

the cosmic clock

marks our time on earth.

Seasons turn.

Tides rise and fall.

One generation passes on to the next.

Nothing lasts forever,

not even the stars themselves.

Night by night,

over countless years,

the earth will slow on its axis.

The moon will drift yet further away.

Days will lengthen,

the tides grow quiet.

Billions of years from now,

the seemingly endless cycles

will come to a close

as the fires of creation at last

consume the sun.

Yet ours is but one small star,

in one tiny galaxy,

in a universe beyond measure.

Perhaps there are other

rhythms of life,

unseen by our eyes,

yet as grand and majestic

as our own.

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