Poem: "The Stars So Far and Near"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is the freebie for the March 2014 Crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from ellenmillion. It also fills the "green" square in the public card for the Spring and Autumn Bingo fest over on allbingo. This poem belongs to the project The Blueshift Troupers.


"The Stars So Far and Near"


Between one moment and the next,
everything changed:
the stars that had once been
so far away were now
within reach.

No more slowboats --
the old generation ships
and embryo ships and sleepers
were rendered obsolete in an instant.

It was zooming out on a map;
the galaxy that seemed endless
now looked no larger
than the span of a man's hand.

What had been lost,
might be found again;
or others might be lost anew,
exploring these strange gates.

The ships changed, too,
because the old machines
could not handle the jump gates
as well as the strange aliens
who introduced themselves as hiveships.

You could jump
from one gate to the next
between breaths,
and yet it was no longer
as simple as rocket science.

A hiveship was a person -- people --
with opinions and personality and goals
that you had to take into consideration.
You could plant whole gardens inside them,
green leaves like a symbol of spring,
unfurling into possibilities,
but only if they liked you.

Humanity had embarked on a new journey,
but we would never be alone again,
and it was that, as much as the speed,
that changed everything.

Comments

[thnidu]

:-) The last stanza

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

I love this!

[satsuma]

I’m glad you added this verse to my fishbowl list because i’ve somehow never stumbled across it before!

(i’m curious about how this verse’s embryo ships worked, btw, even if they’ve fallen out of use by the time the story picks up, that’d still have a noticable effect on culture)