their busy marketplaces, starved eyes
followed us everywhere, and delicate,
whorled ears strained to swivel
toward our songs.
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Poetry
SAILOR
Mark Rich
Softer, sailor, loosen silk-thin filmcloth:
slip away less speedily
on Solar-zephyr-tautened
topsail. Mission to the Oort—
perhaps—but planetoids and cometary orbs
will fill that darkness eons yet to come:
they will await your probing sensors still
for long millennia.
But how long do we have
to gaze upon that billowed square
of glare-reflective, artful,
microns-thin ingenious slip of engineering?
Days, perhaps, or weeks—
moments only, in the panoramic march
of movements in the astronomic clock.
Stay a little that we may gaze
upon such scientific splendor
pushed by ions one way only:
away. Slower, sailor, stay—.
As if you could, with curiosity
fulfillingly full-filling tautly
your broad silver sail
that pulls you outward.
Our yearning gravity-embrace
is nothing to you. Go. Forgetfulness
will come—when your transmitted images
of what you seek
arrive to dazzle us
who must be left behind.
Copyright © 2010 Mark Rich
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Poetry
BLUEPRINT FOR A DOMED CITY
Jessica Taylor
From outside
you can hardly see the city at all:
just a drop of glass
blocking off the horizon.
Of course, there is no outside.
Inside, buildings stand tall,
shining with safety;
the streets are free from wind and rain,
the sky glimmers.
The dome itself was built on a clear day,
as regulations suggested.
They erected scaffolding,
created security
out of molecules and atoms.
There is no forever in the city.
The ends of space are clear from inside.
And the ends of time as well.
When lovers fight
there is nowhere for them to go.
Likewise families,
friends. This city keeps
all its citizens.
Copyright © 2010 Jessica Taylor
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Asimov's Science Fiction 12/01/10 Page 20
