Poem a day for 7 April 2015: Disconnect

Surfing a Celestial Wave. Photo by Robert Rath from Robert's website.

I really have nothing to say about today's poem.


Disconnect

I fell off the edge of the world
on Tuesday at 9.30 pm.
Dreamily I realise the thin silk line
has frayed and snapped.
Slowfloating away
I notice a tabby cat who'd disappeared from our street
seven months before;
one sock of a favourite pair, long mislaid;
an unfinished apple;
a disconnection notice from the electricity company.
I waft through the atmosphere's edgelands
colliding with cosmic junk and space debris.
I begin to wonder what I'm doing here
and where everyone else is
when I spot a silver spaceship
rocketing towards me
and there's a man inside
waving and smiling
so I wave and smile back
and he yanks me into his capsule.
Pleased to meet you, he says,
shakes my hand
asks if I've been up here long.
Me, he says, I'm just floating around
in this tin-can up here
and there's nothing I can do
I love my wife very much but
you know, it's quite quiet here...
...oh sorry, so rude of me, he grins
my name is Tom,
Major Tom.
And the pot I smoked
and the Bowie records I hazed to
all begin to make sense
as Starman and I
share beers and Pringles and chill
more than one hundred thousand miles
above blue planet earth.

Posted by Jennifer Liston