It seems we’re in the gutter now,
but some of us have looked at stars,
and aimed beyond humanity’s dreams.
They reached the moon, and found somehow
its dust and rock and cosmic scars
meant more than just young lovers’ beams –
they saw earthrise, and showed us all
this fragile bauble, wrapped in lace,
and it began – our quest to find
salvation for our tiny ball,
a future for the human race
and all that lives; a whole, entwined.
And now, trapped in a carbon tent
where microplastics choke the sea
and particles condemn the air,
remember this: that once we went
where we thought we would never be,
and came back safe. Forget despair.
Brenda Read-Brown
