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Shuttle Launch
The ocean at my side,
The stars above me shine.
I walk along the beach
In the open, yet confined.
Confined within my chosen job
I work to clarify
Minutia for the technophiles
To assess and codify.
I escaped into the evening air,
I fled those hotel walls,
And lost within my thoughts I walked
Where sea waves rise and fall.
Orion at my back,
The hunter mounts the sky
His eternal chase continues
As countless years go by.
The waves forever breaking
On this western gulf coast shore
A pleasant cool wind blowing
As it's done since days of yore.
And there, low in the eastern sky,
A bright light climbing up.
The shuttle, I know at once, and feel
My throat filled by a lump.
I watch, it goes behind a cloud,
Mere seconds, start to end.
But seconds etched into my brain,
The first meeting of a friend.
Near twenty years have passed and gone
Since in my college days
I worked to help the shuttle fly
In several little ways.
A minor role, on a project small
On a tiny part of the engine,
I did my best to make it work,
And faithfully put my time in.
Now on this cool night-wind-kissed shore
I for the first have seen
The shuttle leap from its earthbound home
Not watching on a screen.
Chemicals joined in a firey embrace
Shed light in the heat of their passion.
And some of those photons have hit my eyes,
A small, almost negligible fraction.
They traveled the whole peninsula's width
For a millisecond or so,
An triggered my eyes to trigger my brain
To start the memories to flow.
I was not there, with the awe-struck crowd,
Didn't hear the rocket's roar.
But alone on the beach, 'neath Orion's gaze
While waves crashed into the shore.
I turned back toward my rented room
With the dipper now at my back,
And only the sound of the breaking surf
To accompany me on my track.
An awesome sight? No, it wasn't that.
For awe, a meteor would win.
But memorable? Yes, it was that and more.
The awe came from within.
January 22-23, 1998
Copyright 1998, by Steven K. Smith
All rights reserved