The Sky-Minder

Charles Lipsig

Through carbon-fiber towers I look to holographic skies,
Under the sun-chilled, methane waters of a foreign moon
And wonder if this is the royal that made old poets swoon,
The same thunder-gray that made our earth-born parents sigh.

But these are fancy questions, only of passing thought,
Before I climb aloft and grope the sky for leaking seams,
While below, the age-old buy-and-sell continues on, routine,
Among ceramic-metal malls and plastic-gardened courts.

Thousands have died before. Ten-thousands more may yet be killed
With one false move or hidden leak or greedy official wrong.
Apollo’s fires were sudden, but seeping, dome-breached death is long
And I must mind the sky — or with long deaths my dreams are filled.

Here, where I live and love, I pray that all alone I’ll die.
Under the seas of an unlunar moon and clouds of holographic sky