EXOPLANET

Rolling in deep space

in billions of galaxies

circling quintillion stars

are planets that Hubble has told us

are like ours, hospitable to life,

eyes and lips,

oxygen and nitrogen,

carbon: maybe fish and chips

and a Labor Party.

China may as well be such a planet

with its inscrutable bureaucracy,

values and script so foreign,

seeding Beijing clouds with silver

to bring rain, but

making snow,

polluting as though

its prime mission

is to set the world on fire.

But I need not fly

to China, or teleport to space

to find life forms that baffle

with their foreignness.

I can turn to you, so close,

whom I think I know and then

discover by accident one day

that all is not, very not,

as it has seemed.

Why did I not see

in those early images from space

the touch of your airbrush

or sense that your desire for fame

masked by your Oriental calm

eclipsed sound judgement.

Exoplanet?  A cosmic flare of truth

led you up the stairs

to jump and end it all.