Space Anthems

The rocket climbs across a small glass sky,
a phone held sideways as the flame goes by.
Then thunder finds the ribs. The picture shakes.
A child looks up. The little frame gives way.

Before this fire, Gwynne answered someone’s call,
put dates beside the promises, worked through
the weight, the cost, the things that might go wrong.
A signature gave something wings to do.
Now all that work of numbers, names, and when
must bring the people down to Earth again.

Elsewhere, a bookseller has built a fleet.
6 strangers rise above their empty seats.
A woman used to tracking storms below
looks out beyond the weather she has known.
A camera floats. A hand forgets its weight.
For once, there’s nothing heavy in the frame.

And Justin finds his network in a word:
as-TRON-aut. The chorus gets its turn.
His birthday wish has climbed beyond the cake;
the bid helps other children dream and learn.
Somewhere, a pencil adds another fin
to something small enough to carry in.

Already, in the chorus, there’s a Moon
with Justin taking bookings for a room.
The joke arrives before the landing gear;
the builders ask what keeps a person here.

A robot noses toward the buried ice.
The frost must learn to travel through a pipe,
become a drink, a breath, a way to leave.
The dust gets in the joints, abrades a sleeve.
Through 14 days of dark, the reactor glows.
The tracks lead back to where an airlock slows
a hurried hand. Beyond that little door,
someone has left their boots upon the floor.

Sunlight falls across an earthly roof.
The panels take their portion of the day.
The song keeps going, spreads them out in space;
the servers ask how much can come their way.

Now Grok has claimed a cockpit and a view,
with rivals getting smaller down below.
The racks want rockets. Every blinking light
looks ready for permission: Go.

Below that noise, a dish beside a home
lets someone send what wires could never bring.
The cable stopped. The mountain stayed. But now
a child can ask a question through the ring
of sky above the village, wait, and hear
a distant voice arrive beside their ear.

3 failures travel in the 4th attempt.
The next design remembers where they burned.
Along the coast, a booster meets the ground;
the crowd lets out the breath it held for the return.
The chant says Starship, over and again.
The work says: check it. Fill it. Launch it when.

Then Dragon brings its people through the heat.
4 parachutes take hold above the sea.
The capsule swings beneath them, scorched and small.
A waiting hand unclenches on a knee.

Farther ahead, the cargo carries seeds.
A greenhouse waits inside a folded plan.
There must be room for instruments and books,
the little things a person packs by hand.
Between the tools, a song goes out from Earth
to keep somebody company at work.

Imagine, later, someone born on Mars
who knows the Earth through stories and a screen.
A message plays: Rain all morning here again.
The child records: I wish you’d let me see.

Later, an answer crosses all that dark.

The camera turns. Beyond a kitchen door,
rain darkens an ordinary patch of ground.