Member Poem

The Loneliest Road

Another planet grows and shrinks away,

the heliosphere an ebbing memory,

you streaking like a wayward gamma ray.

Around your vessel blooms a potpourri

of comet, nebula, dark energy

rushing you through the void, accelerating,

all you’ve ever cared for quickly fading.

What road is lonelier than the universe?

For decades one could sail and never stumble

across another soul. Things could be worse.

Distracted, you could accidentally bumble

too close to a cosmic gullet and wildly tumble,

yet really no more lost than where you coast

past eagle, spider, witch-head, horsehead, ghost.

Though wandering through space entails great risk,

you have no choice — the sun’s begun to swell.

While moving at velocities as brisk

as jets of interstellar wind, you smell

the rabbitbrush, the desert breezes, dwell

on sounds of soughing yucca palms and creeks,

glimpse bighorn bounding boulders, rusty streaks

of sunsets. As you near the edge of space,

you think of the stone tools your forebears used

while breathing mayfly lives, a vanished race

in tune with wilderness; and, though you’ve cruised

for torrents of time now down this road suffused

with radiation, your single mutant eye

still sees, not stars, but fireflies in July.

Note: The title alludes to Highway 50, The Loneliest Road in America.