Breaking Orbit

I am looking up, yet it is down, the Earth waits below,

I am saying it once again, this is goodbye

Engines are go, I guess we are going to give this one

more try.

The space stands between me and the orb that holds

the lands of rock and green, nothing is like it 

always seemed to be before I found this urge

to breakaway, to reach out into the sky

I am reaching out to Ground Control but the

comes no reply

Sitting there alone, I think about the 

captain who sent me up here as I watched

enraptured by his moments on the imperfect 

box. I fight the urge to call for warp speed as 

we wait for the retort that does not come.

This is it, we are leaving our home,

all the promises that we made in the dark

all our ideas seem little more than a flight of

fancy, an abstract algebraic lark.

Now there is nothing to do but wait in the void

as the minutes slide by looking to our 

instruments for an explanation why.

I swear to the gods amongst the stars

I make promises to the saints that have come and gone before, will the radio reach earthward back to all the things that I had once believed to be true?

Is this all that will remain when we fall away from world of the oceans so deep, so blue?

Will they remember that I was born there?

How long will it take me to forget the clouds and the happy moments that appear to me now that my time remaining is down to seconds, so little time left, heart beats so few.

the electronics sputter, the garble begins to stutter and our isolation ends as the controllers come back to life

This is the end, this is the beginning

this is the moment that will define us as a race

breaking orbit going out into this misnomer 

we still call space.