The Roswell incident

Going to the Edge of Space to Set a Skydiving Record

The Wall Street Journal, 8 October 2012

Ultimately, seen

from twenty-four miles high, from

outside its own eyes, the

uterine earth seems to him more

fragile than even that

other diaphanous womb, the balloon

uplifting his

foetal carapace to the outer edge

of inner space. The

umbral gauze shielding earth is but a

filmy dew, ephemeral as the skin enclosing a bubble

of soap.

Up and through the tropopause, with

frost threatening to shatter his hopes he cracks

open the eggshell

unleashing into the void his

fetid cargo of re-breathed

oxygen-depleted air, and

ushers in the vacuum which

fills the capsule as if with sadness.

Out on the launchpad he calls his

Uncle Joe: You out there, Joe? You

feeling what I’m feeling, Joe?

Or am I alone........???

The veterans of Roswell swear

what fell to earth that ‘47 night blew in

on a breath of extraterrestrial air

and couldn’t have been the shed silver skin

of a lifeless weather balloon.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet