Silence

The shuttle's soft curves seem cartoonish
against the twin rocket boosters, cruder, like missiles,
made to be destroyed,
and the dry-blood red tank, to whom a job well done
is the briny corrosion of the sea.
All four stand hugging against the sky,
looking the part.

The engine ignites with a deep roar—
the blasting white noise of a commercial jet's takeoff
with the crackling licks of a forest fire,
miles away but still vibrating in my chest.
They say it's like there's not enough space for all that sound.
White smoke grows thick around the platform
as if simply to highlight the event,
to say 'Here something otherworldly will take place,'
like that which marked the comings and goings of witches
in the Wizard of Oz.

And as I watch this, I am reminded
of meteoroids hurling through space at at 150,000 mph
striking the moon in small chalky splashes,
a comet ripping past the sun with its frostbitten tail
the blue giant, its solar flares 30 Earths long lapping at the darkness,
two planets colliding, a ring of debris screaming outward—
all this happening, and happening
in an absolute silence.

— 2016