After I am done writing this poem I will put it in an envelope and seal it.
Then I will go to everyone I know and ask them to write a poem and put it in an envelope and seal it.
Then I will ask my friend who studies rockets to design a capsule that will be launched from Earth
and return in 40 years.
Then we will all take our poem-filled envelopes and seal them in the spherical rocket.
My friends will write poems about me, poems about themselves,
themselves as children; about the book they just finished.
My friend who designed the rocket will probably write a poem about science.
We will go to a field and light the fuse and the rocket will speed away in a moment.
It will fade to a dot in the blank blue sky
and then it will disappear behind a cloud that looks like a dragon.
We will all then attend to the busy errand of growing older.
We will acquire houses; we will lose family members to age greater than ours
we will learn historical dates, then forget them.
Then we will learn the dates again, but forget that they were ever forgotten.
The silver orb will tumble silently through an empty starscape.
It will circle a distant but furiously burning sun
that will also rise from our horizon every morning.
After enough of that, it will be the moment to return to the field.
We will stand more trim and well-dressed than before
and most of us won’t recognize each other.
Then a boom from above will announce our returned vessel.
It will scream across the sky and arc
before the sun
before tearing a crater through the dirt.
It will land about three feet from where we thought it would.
It will look exactly the same, preserved by the nothing of space.
Everyone will unceremoniously rip open their long-locked envelopes
and a cloud will drift in front of the sun.
My friend who built the rocket, having become a science teacher,
will remember when he loved science and didn’t care about discipline.
People will read their poems about me and quickly look up to see if I am still there.
I will read this poem and remember the furiously burning passion of my rocket poem project,
passion which cooled to embers and then ash and then blew away.
The sun will come out again and we will recognize each other
but we still won’t remember each other.
The sun will burn off our memories like fog from the field.
