The Golden Age
Lyn Gardner
A golden age is not what you suppose:
Not gilded time and celebrated lives.
Who built the pyramids? Their glory stands
Anonymous, the testament to an age.
In every age, folk work with quiet pride,
Knowing their achievements stand alone.
We might dig deep and find who’s Ground Control
While childish lips chant names of astronauts;
But later minds remember only firsts:
“Godspeed, John Glenn” and “One small step for man,”
While Luna shines, now ours, a place that’s known.
The “golden years” aren’t what the name evokes.
Some cultures honor wisdom in the old,
While others let them languish, past all use,
A universe collapsed to memories.
To gild those years does not eclipse regret,
Nor give back all that time already lost.
Our golden age is here: now we embark
Upon a quest to take back all our years.
We’ll not see Earth again—yet our delight
Shines bright in holos of our grandchildren,
Already grown while we sit nine years hence,
Bathed in radiation’s lethal warmth
Above an alien, life–giving soil,
Secrets to send back to dying Earth.
Who else would go, to die? They hail us Glenns,
After the man who proved it could be done.
There are no twilight years out where the sun
Shines all the time—and falls, sans gravity,
Now make us laugh like children. We give life
To an end that holds eternity for all—
To save the Earth, change Gold Years back to Green.
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Lyn Gardner writes: Thus far, I’ve had over a hundred poems and twenty–three stories published or accepted by such venues as The Doom of Camelot, The Leading Edge, Mythic Delirium, Talebones, and Twisted Cat Tales. In 2004, I attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop.
Poem © 2007 Lyn Gardner. All other content copyright © 2007 ByrenLee Press
Copyrighted by the author unless otherwise noted.
Art Director: Bonnie Brunish
