Suspended Animation
We left the atmosphere in a glittering swarm
of endless duplications of our shiny carapaces,
their clepsydral entrails studiously trickling,
counting down to a less unlikely tomorrow
as we fled the noisy light of our reddening sun.A blue star in the constellation of the Dragonfly
was chosen again and again by the fanned array
of holy images, no matter how many times
magicians shuffled their whispering surfaces.
For days, everyone took turns at the telescopes.Beyond familiar stars the field worked for years,
connecting us with invisible filaments to our past.
When an unexpected demonstration of a doctrine
in the sacrament of physics turned our brothers
to a sudden flash, then cooling cinders drifting
into another universe, we became uncertain
of our destination, lost in an altered cosmology.We entered the stacked, small cavities of oblivion
and sealed their doors against the pressure of grief.
Sleepwalking toward entropy, we float onward
in a silent void, wrapped in the blanket of time.
In the house of dreams we open the curtains
and wait for the pale light we know will come
from a strange sun rising over an alien world.
©2002 F.J. Bergmann
"Suspended Animation" appeared in Lite–Baltimore's Literary Newspaper May/June 2002