
Out There
Life, it shouldn’t be so rare;
I don’t mean Mars or Venus.
There isn’t much can flourish there –
Bacteria, perhaps, can bear,
But higher life is pretty spare;
Too harsh for such a genus.
Yet surely in the Milky Way,
How many planets must convey
A goldilocks for genes at play ?
They surely must have seen us.
Life, it shouldn’t be alone;
It seeks out other threads, where
On planets older than our own
They should have let themselves be known
Across the interstellar zone –
What wonders might have bred there ?
The distances, of course, are vast,
Yet still we should receive the blast
Of radio from light years’ past –
Yet all we get is dead air.