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.
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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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