Saturday, November 9, 2019

KA Rees #43 - Fires from Space


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.



No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.