Poetry

Pioneers
by Holly Day

Someday, all of our children will drift off across space
and it will be just like when parents said goodbye to children
who sought their fortunes across the newly-opened prairies.
There will be no way to contact them, save for correspondence sent
across light-years, letters
that will take years to reach their destinations, if ever.
They may never be seen again.

Someday, a man and a woman will sit in their living room, looking at pictures
of far-off planets that they’re too old and feeble to reach during their lifetimes
maybe hold each other’s hands as they receive transmissions containing
the voices of their grandchildren recorded long before, years before.
“I wish you could see this,” says a man aged so far beyond
the child they watched climb up into the stars.
“You’d love it here. I miss you guys so much.”