For Voices Beyond Earth (a poem)

It’s difficult to look up into the night sky, full of countless stars, and not wonder if there is a voice to hear through the loneliness of space.

For Voices Beyond Earth

.-.. .. … – . -.

Pulses, rhythmic, emit out in Hertz—

The astral cacophony of radio waves;

Ears, hot and ionized, twitch and strain

For a word among phantom voices,

Echoes in code or a brief hello.

Diving, express, into the dark abyss

To places where time is malleable

And emptiness acts as the primal

Circumnavigator,

We wait and we listen for you there

.-.. .. … – . -.

god, 

if only photons were words

We might show faith in our radios

might translate Pulsars into Poems;

but the roar of prime num ber s

E

x

t

end only into increasing a bsu rdit y—

ce rtai nly we stand in a crowded room

s h o u t i n g  

Wanting more than ancestral divinity,

more than the clang and

steam-hiss

of mechanics, of worlds in their routine;

How deftly we listen in deafness,

Ear-muffed by the din of functional 

Infinity

.-.. .. … – . -.

Yet still our ears hallucinate,

In the quite of a clear night sky,

A desired guest

Knocking at the door—

…

Cover Image: promotional photo for the 2016 film, The Search for Life in Space