Captain Collander Captures Callisto

By David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Darkness moves impalpably about my ship,
Unfelt caresses lavished on my metal skin.
The stars are holes piercing immensity,
Letting in light of other, brighter worlds.
I twiddle knobs and chew my lower lip,
Not eager to embrace my death again.

Tiny worldlet spins
Cold companion to bright flame
Hunter comes: I wait.

My departed brothers cluster round my ship,
They speak to me of life, and death, and sin,
Does my quarry hide or does she flee?
With finger round the deadly trigger curled,
My course is bent by gravity's strong grip,
Out of the sun I will come swooping in.

Burrows creep inward
Penetrating stony seed
Mother of my self.

I settle on a crater's swollen lip,
I see the mouth my brothers entered in.
This pebble hurtles through an empty sea,
And yet forbidden life within is furled--
I have for death essayed this frightful trip,
And to avenge my vanished kin.

Here is my consort
Our nuptial bed awaits
And I am in it.

My cell is small and in my head a chip,
I am straightened, bound, within,
I feel a stranger swelling in me,
Is this the fate toward which I hurled?
My blood this hidden partner means to sip,
It is my coffin I am prisoned in.

Our children strengthen;
My brave lovers' sacrifice
Fuels life's beginning.