Fires from space
From space, look
down—see red nails break
new lines the face
of hundreds of thousands
of acres razed, the
animals burned; the schools and homes,
burnt umber, gold
ochre; lines of fire—this clarion.
The deep dark of
mushroom clouds
billow the belly of
a Boeing 737-800
a man takes a
picture and tweets it,
makes a sign for the folk
lodged in the teeth of it.
The passenger on
flight VA935 from Sydney to Brisbane
muses about a golden
record attached to a craft,
launched into space.
He watches it
complete flybys of
Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's
largest moon,
Titan. He watches pictures of storms,
magnetic fields,
sees data points for cosmic radiation,
images of the moons,
a dirty grey snow spilling across
the YouTube video.
Sees the most distant thing humans
ever made, this
message board cast into space.
Remembers the words: This from a small
distant world a
token of our sounds, our science, our images,
our music, our
thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive
our time so that
we may live into yours. Looks
down at the smoke
a
vast thick pall of dirt, a purse of the lips
for the folk holding fast in
the flames
an
image of a metallic body
engulfed, such thin material in which to hold
a
soul—birds, whales, Laurie
Speigel. Anatomically correct male
and
female sent across the sky.
Our thoughts and feelings; this
gold ochre.
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