Home Sweet Home

The brightest little sparkle,
with the smaller barren Luna to its right,
is home to all of us,
and everyone we've ever known or heard of.
It is the home of all of human history;
of every ancestor of every human;
of every known insect,
vertebrate,
bacterium,
diatom,
virus,
or cartoon character;
of every human thought,
invention,
fantasy,
emotion;
of every word ever spoken;
of every murder and all kindnesses; of every war and every turned cheek;
of every kiss;
of every curse;
Washington, Mao, Elizabeth I,
Hitler, Gaddafi, Herod,
Ceasar, Alexander, Monctezuma, Tutankhamun,
Curie, Einstein, Galileo,
Twain, Shakespeare, Aesop,
Jesus, Mohammed, Abraham,
Erickson, Columbus, Armstrong
... all romped on its surface as children.

The water planet.Our little blue oasis.
Home sweet home.

(The photo was taken May 6, 2010 by the Messenger spacecraft during its mission around the planet Mercury. Messenger is busy mapping Mercury and searching for asteroids in the inner solar system. It giving us the first new close-up information from Mercury since Mariner 10, thirty years ago.)