Explorer

He was always a single moving point,
Ballistic on a sole trajectory;
His biography a pattern of vectors,
A tension of factors loosed,
All his past a fired bow.

To explore without end his goal
(Though discovery’s shock he never truly felt).
Drawn to the isolation of the line,
He shunned rank landscapes of sensation, scent
The glow of light and air and heat.

This observer never landed, loved
Or traded deals of shoddy cargoes,
Slaughtered or raped,
Leaving miscegenate colonies to thrive
Or wither in his wake.

Instead, he monitored impure worlds from far.
Fecund cultures that germinate in dirt
He caught and held against the light
And all they ever did or felt
Turned in the precision of his gaze
To monuments, museum pieces;
Their lives a captive, feathered ritual
On old anaemic photographs.
His subtle theft robbed both their gift
Of love, their threat of hate.

He leaves an elegant and empty arc,
A cold and distant wonder.
Odd that such a banisher of mysteries
Is always to remain one.
Was precision only infinite capacity for taking pain,
Or a prolonged pressing of the self-destruct?