Lori Lamothe
Itinerary
after Edgar Mitchell
The astronaut who walked the moon
tried to change footprints into doves—
knew the only magic aliens
really want to teach us
is how to get our shit together.
Meanwhile there are new planets
waiting for us to name them.
They aren’t like Pluto,
which tried to pass itself off as
part of our system
so we’d keep printing its photo
in textbooks.
So what if a few of them
refuse to turn,
if day and night live perpetually divided?
Who cares if their star
is colder and dimmer than the one
we’ve got now? If they’re
jammed together,
one right next to the other,
a few dozen light years away?
Because it’s important not to lose
sight of the main idea.
To know we’re ready for any catastrophe—
that if we can just
learn to fly a little faster
we can set out for new worlds
to wear out.
Lori Lamothe is the author of three poetry collections, Kirlian Effect (FutureCycle Press, 2017), Happily (Aldrich Press, 2015) and Trace Elements (Aldrich Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Kettle Blue Review, The Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, Verse Daily and elsewhere.
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