Katherine Fallon

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Voyager, -Bound, Father

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I.

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Old man, believer in other, surely better 

worlds: up there would be anti-gravity, 

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your bones buoyed, seeming not to know 

each other, never having met. No air, either.

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You'd like it there, in the dark room 

of boyhood dreaming; you saw it 

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on TV and never forgot. No narrative, 

there’s no space in space and no way 

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to hold you. When you let go, you'll sink 

down low. You’ll rise, too, like a cream top.

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I’d give you away—a way up—if I could. 

You might as well be the silence 

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of Voyager's orbit, the golden record itself:

far-flung message, eternally unheard.  

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II.

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Father, now you are the ghost elephant[1],

the vacant boat[2], the spot on the wall

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where a portrait used to hang, brighter 

than its surrounds, demonstrating loss. 

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You are the cockless dawn, the cloudless 

sky, the draught-blighted farmland 

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of the Midwest. Deep in earth though not

of Earth at all, you are black-hole material: 

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demoted planet, imploded star, I wake 

because you told me of landings. 

 

 

 

 

__________

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[1] From Jean Valentine’s “Ghost Elephants”

[2] From Li Young Lee’s “Black Petal”

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