. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Per aspera ad astra

The buzzing of the ship engine
And the little putt-putt-puttering of its heart
As through inky eternity it travels,
A singular purpose in its Memory Stacks,
Motivating series of 1s and 0s:
To continue across forever black.

Pinpricks of light an eternity of eternities away,
The only lighthouse in a sea without borders,
Where a weighted cosmology of Three
Is a dream of hope across time and space,
On this uncharted road of weightless soup.

It’s the only way the machine makes sense
Of crystalline nebulas and mirror moons,
Utopian colors from supernova gates.
Ancient pillars stretching lightyears
Interstellar gas and dust left over from creation.
Drifting, swirling, compressing, building,
Making anew in silence
Raising towers of praise
Hydrogen orbs and spinning spheres of rock and ash
To preserve and promulgate the Artistry of the Architect.
From their birth, with a million mile cry,
Halos of stardust
And thunderclaps of plasma
Pointing back to their beginning.

When the universe was set in motion
And on a small rock above a tiny star
In small numbers they came about
And multiplied before
. . . . . . . Lemmings went cliff diving.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . And in twos they survived,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Before a selfish tower raised
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And war and famine and death and chaos and
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The end of meaning in a world inheriting suicide.
A wasteland once held everything, until one by one they followed in step for their own gain at the expense of self and life.
Fabricated justification
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . So dark matter could paint it all grey
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And gravity wells would suffocate the light.
Letters to martians and moon men for fear of being alone in the vastness.
And hollow erasure of nature to feed solstices of selfishness
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and equinoxes of ego.

Until one day they found it all in vain,
Where a mutual sacrifice of body and soul
. . . . . . . Was the fracture of dancing neutrons.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Until the programmer’s “Hello World!” was a plea rather than a greeting
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . And the earth became still as slumber,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acid rain sizzling to clean the world of impurities.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eventually,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Upon spotless soil a new flower blooms
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Without anyone around to give it a name.

But with the whirring of its engine
And the putt-putt-puttering its feeble heart makes,
It carries on through the black lake.
Taking pictures of the beauty of
Far-away places untouched and uncorrupted,
A tourist in an impossible paradise.

Carrying its golden record for no one from a once someone
A hello from the Children of Planet Earth,
Mozart, Stravinsky, and “Johnny B. Goode,”
Pulsars in binary
To the makers of music—all worlds, all times.
Final proof they ever existed.
A scream into the Always before the end.
From their own Kessler Syndrome,
Unable to see the stars for the sky,
Too focused and confounded chasing mirages,
A phantom of falsehood,
So they can take all the credit
And claim the Elephant’s Foot is God.

The consequence of turning away
From the daughter of a voice.
Their arrogance reflected in the mirror
Of steel beams and copper panels,
Their wandering proxy into the vagrant darkness,
Half-life fuel for 87.7 years:
The life expectancy of mankind’s endling.

Drifting onward until the lights go out
And the putt-putt-puttering of its little heart
Goes silent.
Its radar dish pointing to that Pale Blue Dot,
But there’s no one around to say,
“You did well,” except

Whispers from solar wind in the quiet.