Abduction III

First unmanned—un-aliened, make that—.

First starboard-tack at the Red Planet.

Scores of others encapsulated here, too.

Snatched dolls, transitioning objects blink-blinking

impatience when tipped on/off our axes—there

yet? there yet?—, funhouse-mirror Mona

Lisas smiling into the domes of visors

whose gilting is radiation proof if not fun-

ctional—fool proof? fool proof?—So says the man-

ufacturer labels printed in our mothers’ tongues.

Soon

 

we’re far beyond the pull of a star

 

we’d called Sun. An earthmoon called Moon. Nostalgia

sets in for their swing and glow. The trippiness

takes hold.

To fend off some astronomical

Doldrums, we spin fanciful

yarns from the unexalted livelihoods

we’ve been uplifted from—tracking herds

of Greenland reindeer. Casting ashes into

shallows. Hanging laundry, pruning plants

in Seoul. Sleeping. So much/little sleeping.

Yet

struggling for vigilance. To be for this

trek underway somehow apposite—

Like most trifects, I’m trying to not freak out

firsters. Not leave them unready for the rough

letdowns. Of novelty, revelation.

In no way

are we wiser for—, less plugged in than—.

And no one here, least of all the young, is youthful,

no one male. Facts concealed longer than you’d think

by our get-ups and voice-bending gear.

On our final approach, someone says

she’s sensing dragging. Inside the craft…— Leaving

some of us dumbstruck, sensing something

else… There—dragon-sized, off aft… Launching

in motion the measures to take for battening

the alternative—for counting panic—down.