A Golden Summit

The frontier was not closed, but reborn;
a third dimension added to looking west.
Up there, so much more—
Faustian unrest.

Twenty-somethings riding steel,
changing humanity’s reality.
Cosmos beneath the keel,
already relegated to history.

China Lake, Edwards by way of Muroc, White Sands,
epicenters of fiction becoming fact.
Los Alamos, Tonopah, and of course Dreamland,
where the sky was forever cracked.

From bike mechanics to star travelers,
in barely seventy years.
It’s all over now—
occidental fear.

How could those rocket men have ever surmised,
with bonds as strong as brothers;
that their hard work and restless minds,
would be retired to babysit others?

-Anthony Bavaria