They Named Us

[bairnsidhe]

Humans, as a species,
Packbond to anything
That will sit still long enough
And sometimes,
To things that won't.

They are a lonely People
Who look up
And out
And down
And everywhere
For other People they can
Be People with

They searched the skies
For years
For decades
For centuries
Hoping to find someone
To be friends with

When things started to look
Not so good,
For the Earth,
For Humans
For the chance to find others
They built robots
To do a job they could not.

They gave them metal bodies,
Silicon brains, and the directive
"You want to explore"
And they did.   After all,
They were built in Humanity's image

Maybe in a hundred years
Humanity will be gone
Maybe they will have killed themselves
Or poisoned their planet
And maybe when the People they sought
Arrive, they will find Humans long gone.
But they will find robots,
And ask them what Humans were like.

"Well, they built us," the robots will say.
"Loved us, sang to us, and named us:

Sojourner - one who visits and travels
Spirit - the sentient part of a person
Opportunity - a chance for progress
Curiosity - a desire to know
Insight - the power to understand

So they must have thought
Those things were important.

And they told us to tell you

Hello!"

Comments

[librarygeek]

<3

[chanter1944]

Crying at my desk at work. This is professional grade amazing; you could submit this for publication, and I bet editors would pounce.

[bairnsidhe]

I'm very tempted to do that, because this poem kind of ripped itself free of me. Like, it doesn't feel like I wrote it, just that it was there and I wrote it down, because not writing it down would be painful.

I'm just not sure where one sends short poems about Mars rovers.

[siliconshaman]

I dunno, but I bet the people at JPL would love it!

[alatefeline]

May I signal boost?

[mdlbear]

Likewise -- I like this a lot.

[bairnsidhe]

Yes, please do.

[bairnsidhe]

Feel free!