One first flight, Columbia’s name.
Seven souls aboard, bound for fame.
Six days, then ten, experiments thrive,
Eighty hearts of science, dreams alive.
Sixteen days, the Earth they skim,
Reentry calls—light fades dim.
Tick-tick, hiss-hiss, crack-crack—a sound,
A breach unseen, the heat unwound.
1.67 pounds, a foam unseen,
Pierced the wing, unstitched the dream.
40 miles high, the flames collide,
Mach eighteen, as heat did stride.
Mach fifteen—a fiery scream,
The air ignites, the fragile seams.
Seven names, carved deep in space,
Their sacrifice, a lasting grace.
At 9:00 a.m., a nation cried,
29 months, the fleet must bide.
Tick-tick, sigh-sigh, hush-hush—we wait.
Columbia’s legacy will navigate.
Eighty dreams and the minds they fed,
We honor the fallen, their voices not dead.
Categories:
hundred thousand, nostalgia, space,
Form: Free verse
So sad the day
five hundred thousand slipped away
too many names to recount
lost as the pandemic mounts;
some believed it all a hoax
anger, violence to easily provoked
but for those who've lost someone dear
the reality is quite near and clear.
Say your prayers as it begins to slow
and wiser minds with wisdom grow
facing challenges still unknown
this crisis on all the world is sewn
but mindful hearts and innocent souls
bear the lessons learned and truest goals
to breach the separate selfish yields
revealing the goodness in humanitarian appeals.
Categories:
hundred thousand, absence, death, humanity, loss,
Form: Rhyme
Some rhyme
Some need capitals, not capitols.
Some people can speak them.
Without knowing how to write at all.
If you use them, please spell them correctly.
I have no idea what I would do without them.
600,000 of them
And only one of me.
I am opening the dictionary right now.
I want to learn ten more.
Ten a day.
No, wait. I am old.
I had better learn twenty a day.
They are ready to be used.
Smiling from the pages of a Thesaurus,
Taunting me, laughing at my ignorance.
Yet free for the taking.
Categories:
hundred thousand, word play, words,
Form: Free verse
Each night
you dream
in fours or fives
or more--
hundreds of dreams a month,
thousands of dreams a year...
yet you think you've dreamt
only a few, and can scarcely
remember those--
where then are
those unknown dreams?
Are they hiding?
Hiding in a special place
within your unconscious,
that vast part of mind
lying iceberg-like
'neath the waves
of the knowing world?
Are those dreams
that came alive only
in the dark side of
your mind still there,
waiting patiently
to be known, known
by your sleeping soul
when it awakens
in the real world?
I have lived long enough
to have made over 100,000
of these little home movies--
will I ever get to see them again?
Categories:
hundred thousand, dream, introspection, memory, mystery,
Form: Free verse