We liked the sound of his voice, balanced
somewhere between childlike wonder
and the calm certainty of knowing,
We liked his red cap bobbing against
the shifting blue, his sun-weathered skin,
hands gently cradling one alien lifeform
or another, startled into being, reaching out
in all directions at the expanse of air.
We loved most the strangeness of it all,
every new thing in search of a name,
this kingdom so far removed from the drab
certainty of classrooms and housing projects.
How else could we have known that
the world, like us, was made mostly of water,
how else to imagine our small bodies
descending into darkness unafraid,
suddenly weightless among the current,
how else could we have ever believed
in all the beauty we could not see?
