Download PDF of this full issue: v53n1.pdf (37.7 MB)

Afterwards (poem)

By Woody Powell

The brown ball spun idly
in place
where it had always been,
third planet from the sun,
now baked to a hard crust
of shattered dreams.

It took millennia,
before the crust began to soften, allowing
a glint of iridescent blue to shimmer
at the edges of continental masses
beginning to wreathe
in shifting patterns.

A deep green spread,
interrupted
by vast yellow and dusky orange
intrusions,
holding back the verdant sprawl,
creating domains soon to be
resplendent in a cloak
of life-giving gases.

She was done,
completed,
and sounding a silent (siren?) song
of invitation:
please come back,
accept my forgiveness,
I know you didn't mean to destroy me,
please come back
and make a home here.