Voyager
We’ve packed our bags, we’re set to fly
no one knows where, the maps won’t do.
We’re crossing the ocean’s nihilistic blue
with an unborn infant’s opal eye.
It has the clarity of earth and sky
seen from a spacecraft, once removed,
as through an amniotic lens, that groove-
lessness of space, the last star by.
We have set out to live and die
into the interstices of a new
nowhere to be or be returning to
(a little like an infant’s airborne cry).
We’ve set our sights on nothing left to lose
and made of loss itself a lullaby.
–Todd Hearon
One of many great poems by Hearon and a good one for the beginning of a new year. Todd and his poet wife Maggie Dietz are old friends. They live in Exeter New Hampshire and are both writing, teaching and raising twins. Todd’s most recent book, Strange Land, was chosen by poet Natasha Trethewey to win the Crab Orchard Poetry Series in Poetry Open Competition Award.
I just spent some time yesterday on a post about NH’s Poet Laureate. The state has so many poets, I’ve discovered. Lovely to see this poem here.
Happy New Year!