So Say We All- 8 Poems of Hope
So Say We All
8 Poems of Hope
Based on the re-imagined TV series
Battlestar Galactica
Adama’s Lament
I sit
back against the wall
of this ship
to prop myself upright-
I am in ceremonial dress
I will always wear the uniform proudly
I gaze at the naked ribs of my ship
picked clean by the years
count the black cracks in her hull
the ancient mariners would see
water seeping in- standing knee high in salt
But here...space bleeds our oxygen-
fine mists of air exploding
amongst the stars
I have bled quietly the same air for
4 years now
the two of us, this ship and I, torn apart like
the cleaned carcass of a once fine animal
We are old
The pastures are near
We will be the last of our kind left behind
It is time to abandon these ships
for Scott
Roslin’s Dream
Buried in this haze of stars and galaxies
Are pockets of hope
These images pass gently through my head
like the ghosts of all the people who
have followed me
the ones I have lead astray and asunder
Bill, I am naked now from head to the soles
of my feet
Bill, tubes and wire fibres line my lungs
Bill and me laughed the other day at my bedside
I like when he reads to me
We smoked something he had found between the pages
I think one of us had hidden there a long time ago
We smoked and we laughed hard
I would like to laugh the cancer
from my body
excise it like we have been excised from our homes
set it adrift into space….. deep…deep space
Shake the chains of medicine from my empty lungs
Bill and I play like playmates in a secret garden
We have no use for prayer
I tell Bill we must abandon this ship
It might be short, but it is still our time
Apollo's Lament to Time
I know you from your past life
when you are just a child
standing in the driveway
wagon in hand
Zack in the other
I still know you from your new life
in the hangar standing beside your craft
as though it were life itself
I know you from my dream
of my brother, my brother who loved
you, who then lost you to love
I know you now as the lost
standing beside the wall of the missing
your single picture amongst the many