A tin can slung into space
glinting like a silver sequin
on a black stellar gown.

One metal tube of wires,
dials stuck together
with algorithms and adrenalin.

Made to fling flesh toward the cosmos,
announce a human presence
to dumb provinces of fire and stone.

An arrow shot through the junkyard
halo of sub-space, leaving six billion people
holding breath, eyes plastered to TV screens.

To know three men fastened to a flaming
rocket, down to the obscene intimacy
of blood pressure, respiration and excretion.

To lasso with a rope of calculus
a waterless world with toxic air
that holds them loosely to itself.

To mark with human footprints
the soil of a small stepping stone
on the way to somewhere else.

Sharon Scholl is a retired college professor of humanities and non-western cultures who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website of music and poetry free for download. She has a new chapbook just out Unauthorized Biographies and poems current in Linch Ticket and Testament.