Microbism

Peter Magliocco

Now I wonder how the stars
regard us majestically
during the long midnights
of summer, when we contemplate
the enormity of space.

Do astral sentient beings stare
back through their own telescopes?
Those living in stellar architecture
vacuum stardust from the cold
landscapes of desolate silence,

perhaps like ghosts waiting
to manifest themselves someday.
Draining energy from our future
digital instruments, waiting
for our knowledge to equal

their own erudite sciences.
Those ancestral gods will awake
from a long, cosmic hibernation
to scan the heavens at last.
Will their bulbous eyes be peeled

through squamous orifices,
writing new testaments in
words of alien language
describing the last remnants
of earth's inhospitable barrenness?

A geography toppled by some
civilization nearly extinct,
except for the lingering microbes
of human origin, now hiding in
terrestrial oceans of dust.