Posting this month's poem a few days early. Tomorrow will be the Sunday Who Review as usual, but Buster Monday will be pushed back a day so I can talk about the Oscars.
* * *
Last
Thoughts of a Lost Cosmonaut
Some
would say a death in space
Is the
worst kind of death
To be
had.
Not
that they mean, however,
That
it’s the most painful.
No, the
annals of horror
Have
shown there are grimmer,
Grislier
ways to go.
A death
in space is instead
Deemed
the worst in terms of distance,
In
terms of the knowledge
That an
atmosphere
Separates
you from the rest of your kind.
A sort
of inhumanity
Clings
to the thought of dying
Out of
reach of your planet.
For the
loved ones losing you,
Nothing
stands
To
anchor their grief.
A death
at sea at least leaves
A body
of water,
A
somewhere they can point at,
Journey
over, or wade into,
And
say, “Here’s where you ended.”
The
forever of space
Leaves
no such ground
For
them to go to.
But as
for me,
I don’t
bemoan this death in space;
I’ll
take my stardust burial.
Mourn
me
Through
a telescope lens
And
leave flowers
Under
any night sky.
As I
unceasingly float
From
all the solid ground I’ll ever know,
My
thoughts rest on what my end
Says of
my life.
To this
irretrievable, drifting cosmonaut,
A death
in space simply means
Mine
was a life that stepped
Beyond
the common orbit.
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