EXCERPT: from The Octopus & Other Poems Right now, the Voyager shuttles 1 and 2 are pushing deeper into known space. They will, like so many great American home runs, go far beyond the fence, across the street and through a window. They will never be recovered. In a laboratory in Pasadena, at tables cluttered with cold cups of coffee and dot-matrix printouts, men interpret what Voyager sees: the spotty volcanic surface of Io, the irregular shape of Amalthea. Voyager carries greetings from Earth. Simple diagrams of how our genes spool. Of the body of a man. Of where we can be found, like the map in the mall: We Are Here (note how the third dot in line is given more emphasis, stationed slightly above the other eight). Also presented are rows of numbers, the elements of us: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus the modest recipe of our shared life. I wish the world’s memories well. I have my own secrets—shoeboxes and albums full of scribblings, tokens from misplaced friends and lovers. Everything I keep is paper, already disintegrating. But while I’m here I’ll think of you, imagine you with your newest love who looks so much like you. The two of you get steamed up like clamshells— half-moon arcs on the seabed. When you are both concave you come together, disappear from view; when one is concave, one convex, you form a perfect circle. * It is amazing what thoughts we let slip in and out like mosquitoes through the window. * Along with the math of us, Voyager lugs gold-plated albums etched with our essences: photographs, sounds heard on earth—in nature and on highways and in the womb. Greetings in fifty-four languages, and enough music for some all-night cosmic dance-a-thon. Our lives orbit discretely these days, seldom intersect. Now we trade thoughts on paper— long distance chess, one move at a time. You tell me you can’t condone the reckless hope of finding some other life out there. Can’t fathom the waste.