green star

Hans Bethe sketched a catalytic wheel
by which four protons form one common core
one carbon-neutral drive for all that's real
but mass grows ever less, and never more

Two positrons--tout suite--obliterate.
So--net--it's only x-rays get set free.
Disorder somewhere's got to compensate;
those photons bear a ton of entropy.
A stellar system, while it lasts, perhaps.
But comes a day there's no more fuel to spend
no nuclei survive the big collapse
it's gravity triumphant in the end.
Her spouse may speculate, but can't know why
a physicist gapes slack-jawed at the sky.