Poem: A Hundred Million Miles Away

By Wilfred Kelmsley,

THE CROFT/ Wilfred imagines watching humankind's self-destruction from space in this powerful cosmic poem.

With light created, I departed

From the group with which I’d formed.

And so I sat, the stratospheric centre,

A single point for life to form.

From here I sat in silent sunlight.

Planets churned and journeys started. 

You named them after gods of yours, 

Who now it seems you’ve disregarded.

I watched collisions form your orbit,

Form your atmospheric shell

I saw monsters roam your surface

Then I watched them burn as well. 

I blinked and almost missed it. 

When you first began to breathe  

When you dragged yourself, so painfully,

From out the deepest seas.

At my middle age, it seems you’re growing 

Far faster than I’d care to ponder.

You’ve already killed off creatures

I’ve watched evolve for so much longer. 

And far more recently, you’ve started on each other.

Quite the concept.

If I’d paid attention sooner

I would have noticed from the outset,

That you just weren’t meant to last.

Oh by all means, command and beckon

But in the single day of earth's long life,

You’ve lived for fractions of a second. 

Keep on burning up the ground you walk

Or poisoning your water.

Keep tearing up the earth to feed

The young you send to slaughter.

As when your tombstones turn to dust. 

And your many metal statues fall. 

I'll still be warming, waiting, watching 

The petty drama of it all. 

For billions of years, I've laid a witness

To what my orbit has to say.

Even I can see you’re finished,

From a hundred million miles away

Featured Image: New York Public Library