Monday, August 13, 2012

the apple calls


to question Mars   

yesterday I biked a few hard miles up the valley,
slow enough to notice and appreciate each foot of the way,
and then to glory in the windy rush of the descent,

late afternoon humid air climbed the same valley,
dropped as a hard rain that fell,
and then gloried within a roaring creek racing down the valley,

and, while the creek rushed, tens of millions of miles away,
a human-crafted spaceship found our sister world,
and carefully lowered a ton of vehicle onto the surface of Mars,

all in quest of our need to know,

our drive to know suffuses the rover,
the tool, the science all devoted to the question
of what is out there, beyond our ken,
for who are we at our best?
is it not to be the asker of the question?
and is it not the effort to answer that question?

we lost the Eden of blissful ignorance,
that time when we only knew the moment,
and not the other eternities that stretch before and after,

yesterday, for me, was of grounding in this place, here in the Smokies,
yesterday, for our species, was of reaching for the apple that we may know more.
 
 Rover images courtesy of Google Images

by Henry H. Walker
August 6, ’12

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