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George Hastings Poem
With all the world waiting, we turned our eyes skyward.
Remember that day when we all looked through
Our electric windows on the universe,
Seeing old spheres from a new point of view?
Three times again, and again, and again,
Descending on dancing flames,
They scurried, slow-motion, through ancient dust
Who still now remembers their names?
They did the unthinkable, achieved the impossible,
Went where none had preceded, and more.
"Ho-hum! ...another launch, you say?
Is football on Channel Four?"
Mechanical colonists left behind
When we blasted back home in our ships
Drew life in their bellies from shattering atoms,
Energizing electronic chips.
They sensed the heat of ancient fires,
Moon-embers, banked deep inside.
They felt the star-bits streaming,
And the rumbling silent tide.
ALSEP voices, talking to Earth
In chattering bits and bytes
Sent their colonial treasures back
Through the lunar days and nights.
They measured the limb-shocked solar winds,
Changing the charges in sputtered lands,
And vibrating signals crossed the void,
Twitching inked fingers on metal hands.
The footprints and tire-tracks, unchanging, remain.
Like paths to the future, they glisten.
Solipsistic sentinals converse with themselves,
But there's nobody left who can listen.
George Hastings October 1, 1977
Copyright © George Hastings | Year Posted 2013
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Details |
George Hastings Poem
Here I reflect in a mystical place,
A multitude of mirrored me
That I can see both back and face.
We all stand here at a tension,
Bounced back and forth along the curve of infinity,
Spaced out on a line through a new dementia. 'n'
Clamoring crowds of me coalesce
And diverge on twisted tracks.
In the thick of the throng, it feels all wrong.
I don't even know which is me.
I'm splintered and splattered,
I'm sintered, then shattered.
There seems no way to get free.
Diffused, bemused, split, and re-knit.
Who am I trying to be?
It's too far to see! There's too much thinking!
Trapped in the middle, I'm, slowly sinking.
Too much is revealed; too much is concealed.
I stand here congealed in the cold.
How can I harvest the thoughts that pass,
Flying, rebounding from glass to glass,
The insights that start to unfold?
I'm hungry for meanings, but after the gleanings,
Too few kernels of truth left to hold!
A light gleams somewhere in back of the glaze,
Behind the showers of reigning daze.
Resigned, but despairing, and feigning uncaring,
I break off my staring,
Stepping back in my chill, damp mold.
Copyright © George Hastings | Year Posted 2013
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