space poem #3

  

There is no space between the pauses, no easy leaps

into the cosmic sea, no place to find a purchase,

no ledge to grip and breathe; just the weight of me, a gift

of gravity, just the planet beneath my feet holding me

not as maternal parent but in anger and defeat, a fury

that my eyes gaze upward, that my thoughts yearn to flee.

If the rocket held enough fuel, if my clumsy fingers

knew the order of buttons to push, if the spacesuit

was airtight and through the great thrust I could be free,

my eyes might sometimes look behind me but the reality

would always be the future hanging before me,

one lurching step,
one free-floating fall, one anchored line at a time.

It appears that I am timeless;

a distant light travelling into the past for future eyes to see

and wonder

how a spaceman might have been stranded for so long

upon this sphere of blue and green, and  I also look up

at the stars that have been gone for longer

than starmen, such as me, have been
and wonder what other eyes might have stood
in some other time and place
and seen
and in seeing, have wondered
and with the wonder, yearned.