Aubade from Voyager 1

Houston i am grazing     inside the deep field     only with the telescopes    will you observe     my lilting

all i hear for now       are symphonies       the stars and tiny sonatas        so in a few ways        i am Kepler

in a few ways    i am Chopin      have you found yet      my coordinates      fleeting all the time    Houston

i am drifting       towards a new sun      stranding close enough       to learn its warmth       so i melt snow

globes into comets      i am      my only shooting star      i am          one great distance      away from home

from all the surface        fires glinting      on top of this earth      we’ve built ourselves       i must continue

believing in myself   like a placebo    so when i first open   like a nightshade   beneath the swelling moon

the world will notice            my plummeting signal           clear and astronomical            long and absolute

—

John Paul Martinez holds a BA in Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. His poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and is forthcoming or has appeared in wildness, Redivider, Nashville Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Raleigh Review, and elsewhere. He was selected as a semifinalist for the 2019 Djanikian Scholars Program and a finalist for the 2018 Black Warrior Review Poetry Contest. For more from John Paul, visit https://johnpaulmartinez.com/.