Poetry

Response to the Columbia Shuttle Disaster

By Charlie Cray

Congress should question Raytheon and Boeing
Before Rumsfeld begins aiming and throwing
Hundreds of their missiles at Iraq.
If the telemetry fails when we attack
And it looks like Guernica after it ceases,
Will they be as eager to pick up the pieces?

If not, we may soon need a debris analysis
For our already-damaged ship of state
Whose right-wing yaw is
Making it hard to navigate.

"We lost them so close to home"
Bush said, not far from the Astrodome.
But the "space program will go on. ...
We are that part of creation
That seeks to understand all creation."

Except those he damns to conflagration?