Heaven.
Hell.
Where’s the in-between?
Space.
Moons, planets, galaxies.
Black holes, nebulas, an expanding universe.
A trekker’s dream.
A priest’s dilemma.
A scientist’s dream.

From Stonehenge
to the Sphinx
and other celestial rock gardens,
ancient astronomical storytellers show us
their fables
on existence.
But are we
more or less
enlightened
about their tales
than
the heavens
above
or the hell
below?

In 1963, President Kennedy promised
we’d beat the Russians.
and we did
to the moon, Alice!
But did we step into cheddar, Swiss or ricotta?
Run into monsters?
No.
We planted our flag,
Spent billions on technology
For what?
To play the first interstellar golf game?
Drive, skull, several balls in the zero gravity
Tiger Woods would not be proud to claim his own.

As another millennium has dawned
we build 2001 space oddities.
Stations, probes, lunar landers and rovers.

But if
by chance
we do find something
anything
worth footnoting,
will we leave decipherable bookmarks,
benchmarks
for future generations?
A reminder of what we know
today
compared with what little we learned
from
yesterday?

Maybe
just maybe
we should leave
an obelisk…