EARTHSET

by Margaret DeRitter

 

Four astronauts traveled farther from our planet

this week than any humans had gone before,

saw the Earth set over the lunar surface—

 

a colorful crescent sinking into a dusty

pockmarked gray—while down here a madman

threatened to destroy an entire civilization,

 

ninety-three million souls and thousands of years

of history, one of the oldest cultures we know,

and his cronies did nothing to stop him.

 

What did those warmongers say to their children?

Did they ever teach them the lessons of space,

the singular beauty of our one blue home?

 

Perhaps they should take their own long journey.

Perhaps they should never return.

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

Margaret DeRitter is the author of Singing Back to the Sirens (Unsolicited Press, 2020) which Pulitzer-winning poet Diane Seuss has described as a collection of "achingly beautiful and gutsy poems." DeRitter also wrote Fly Me to Heaven by Way of New Jersey, co-winner of the 2018 Celery City Chapbook Contest. Her poems also have been published in a variety of journals and anthologies. DeRitter lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she worked as a full-time journalist and taught journalism at the college level. She is currently the copy editor and poetry editor of Encore, a regional magazine for Southwest Michigan.

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