Exploring the Great Beyond

They were explorers, intrepid
they walked beyond the hills, beyond the horizon,
beyond the ken of men where the elders said they would surely be devoured.
They went forth with ships and on horses,
accompanied by armies
or alone and given up for gone.
He planted the flag in new lands, she swam in new waters.
Around the round world in their planes,
they saw everything
and looked to the stars.

How do we get up there? they said
to walk on the moon, swing 'round the sun for a picnic on Mars?
So they looked through their lenses
and filled pages with calculations
and listened through their telescopes.
They built their rockets and went,
off around the solar system, going where none had gone before.

How marvelous!
New orbits, new planets, new ideas
Everything going in cicles
around an axis, around a center, in a swirling galaxy in the endless universe far beyond their reach.
Let's go! they said
and they wondered how they could get there.
So they laid their plans and built new ships beyond any they had built before.
Off they went, zooming into the depths of space
to spread humanity further.

And so it was that at full speed and looking far into the future,
they crashed into the wall
an intricately painted wall but the brushmarks could be seen up close
(and that nebula there, is really a thumbprint smudge Godd meant to clean up but never got back to)
The explorers smacked into the wall
with such force they punched a hole in it
and fell off the edge
of the world.
...

That's my own ticket for this week's Poetry Bus, on the theme of Excess/Too much/Over the edge.