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Nocturnes: Caviar And Caveat

[in memory of Clayton Stafford and Leigh Brackett;

and my senior year's summer after college,

June 7th through October 1, 1980]

 

The greatest pride in our technology

came to us at its highest apogee,

enabling us to strut among the stars---

as had that ancient species dead on Mars.

We learned quickly:  celestial duration

outlasts any planet's civilization,

but lacks even the slightest toleration

for that which it considers an intrusion.

We, proud of ourselves, reached that sad conclusion

in the midst of embarrassing confusion;

with time left only for some brief, archival

efforts to leave behind, in preservation,

a caveat before the detonation

out of deep space that shattered our survival.

 

Starward

 

[jlc]

Author's Notes/Comments: 

This is the analogue of how it felt:  to have the world I had known for more than four years suddenly, in a single season, stripped away and shattered by forces more powerful than my pitifully puny illusion of command and integral viability.

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last updated 15 April 2019 - 7:12pm
©8 February 2018 - 9:30am — S74rw4rd
11 February 2018 - 11:05am — allets
allets's picture

Another Alias

As I read I kept thinking this sound like that starfarer cat. Yep. Hi. slc

 

 

11 February 2018 - 2:56pm — S74rw4rd
S74rw4rd's picture

Thanks.  I can only plead

Thanks.  I can only plead that the French novelist, Stendhal, tried over a hundred different pen names and appellations before he found the one that was the perfect fit.  Haiku poets often change when new developments enter their lives, and this is what I was thinking of, since I have received the call to preach as well as to write poetry.

Starward