Spacewoman
What strangeness yet remains to be explored!
She climbs the kitchen stairs from the back door
into a silent house and the glow of wood.
Would she prefer to find there, if she could,
anything other than the waiting pets?
A cat’s a mystery, pure as a planet.
Her steps repeat the age-old two by two,
but her body’s rising like a rocket to
a place almost uncomprehended,
where story turns to mist and evanesces.
The Star of One is full of peace and fur,
not hard to breathe there, but for the terror
at flying through the interstellar gaps,
no extra fuel provided, and no map.
Dizzied, she rests her hand on her flesh suit
to feel her heart still beating, revolves the weight
of her skull helmet. Surely she was chosen
to watch the rising of a foreign sun,
to hum along with solitary spheres,
and send back photos of the distant Earth from here.
In Summer 2019 Anne Myles is retiring from a 25-year career as an English professor and beginning an MFA in poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Whale Road Review, Green Briar Review, and North American Review. Here's a January 2019 interview about her midlife return to writing poetry.
