February 16, 2025Considering Starlink
While we tussle with thoughts of Elon Musk, of Earth,
the Moon and Mars, our particles adrift—
the stars and satellites that light our paths—
our little lives are blinking on and off:
along a stretch of snowy road to school
a slip and crash that stops the heart from one
beat to the next, and two young people
gone. It happens all the time, we know,
how easily it goes, and how the Sun
still keeps its place, and Saturn glints,
and watches tick on miracles of skin
around the tender orbits of our wrists,
unconcerned with immortality:
lucky, unlucky, lucky, unlucky, lucky.
from Poets Respond