Friday, January 26, 2018

The Explorers: a poem of remembrance

The Explorers



The souls departing Earthbound life
Rise to heaven’s plane
Soldier, sailor, priest, or king
The destiny's the same
But in an even higher realm
With stars always in view
Meet those lost in exploration
Remembering how they flew


Komarov toasts Gus Grissom
And Resnik talks with Clark
Ramon and Chalwa share a tale
As they look beyond the dark
Adams shares his glory days
With Husband and McNair
And always they watch
And urge us on
To rise above the air.

Don’t cling to mother Earth, they’d say
God has given us the stars
There’s a reason we aspire
To cross the celestial bar
We gave our lives
(we don’t regret)
To push back the frontier
Remember us by challenging
And rising past your fears

Patseyev, Onizuka
Anderson and Brown
Salute each new endeavour
That lifts us from the ground
To every new thrust into space
They raise their glasses high
And remind us we were always meant
To reach beyond the sky.
- Matt Bille, space historian, 2014

2 comments:

Laurence Clark Crossen said...

https://weather.com/science/nature/video/eastern-cougars-officially-declared-extinct
What do you think? I think pumas are already migrating into the Eastern U.S. from elsewhere even if the eastern cougar really is extinct. There is still the Florida puma.

Matt Bille said...

Laurence, I have always suspected, and still do, that a relict population of Eastern cougars hung on through the 1960s or so, but by now it would be at best a few individuals unlikely to find mates and carry on. Any cougars people see now are probably migrants or escaped/released captives.