OCTOBER 5th, 1957
by tom lyford
In PJ’s we pad over the dewy grass in the
October-cool dusk and mount the old
’48 Plymouth, lying like a cold black boulder
under the studded nightvelvet sky
(me on the roof— lying on my back)
And we are early so it’s like the drive-in movie
almost dark enough for the horns to start honking…
only we’re not out here for a comedy or cowboy
flick but something dark, something sci-fi, something
Flash Gordonish--
because nothing save the Aurora Borealis,
the random meteor, or the occasional
prop-driven airliner’s blinking beacon
ever moves up there in my nightsky…
and so we fidget
waiting on that corner of heaven we’ve been
warned to watch, whispering in hushed reverence…
consulting the big radium-dial pocket watch…
when suddenly: there it is! there!
right there! see it!?
The first untwinkling ‘star’ ever
to swim right through the big dipper,
crawling its geometrically-precise straight line
and clocking a faster transit of the firmament
than a four-engine TWA…
stunned with awe, we quietly mouth the holy word
“Sputnik!”and perhaps feel the mild jolt as our life
and our world, mine and America’s, banks left
to dive down into still one more
alternate & parallel universe
where education will be
radically different now
and anything--
literally anything--
will be possible