I must admit, sitting at my PC’s dusty screen
I followed Endeavour’s final journey
With mixed feelings, opposing voices
Whispering in my ears as she was steered
Slowly through LA’s crazy maze
Of Sun-bleached roads and streets,
Wings passing over the sawdust-haloed stumps
Of once-great trees,
Watched by crowds of starry-eyed Angelenos
And Moon-faced space enthusiasts
In their favourite, faded NASA tees
And KSC-bought astronaut shades.
Part of me marvelled at the bizarre sight,
Delighted to see the famous spacecraft
Welcomed to her final resting place
With such fanfare. What a relief there’d be
No shameful end of days for her;
No Buran abandonment, no exile in a pauper’s grave
Of dust and rust, but a gloriously-lit
Throne room of her own, worshipped
From all sides, lights reflecting off her
Windows, tiles and tyres as lines
Of acolytes – desperate to see a real
Spaceship celebrity – file past,
IPhone cameras flashing, shaking their heads
In disbelief as they finally see
Just how big she was, how beautifully
Her wings swept back, how black
Her Apollo capsule-sized engines were…
Remembering how they’d watched her
Rise from pad into the poster paint blue
Sky, climbing twin pillars of roaring
Dragonfyre to soar among the stars,
Ignoring the pleading of gravity
To sing “Look at me, I’m free, free..!”
…but, whispering in my other ear another voice,
Sad, aggrieved, unable to believe
How, after years of condemning her as
“Death with Wings”, of writing and saying terrible things
About her and the cost of her flights
Fawning crowds now fall at her feet,
Furiously Tweeting declarations of undying love
For her as she passes the end of their street,
Crying out “We miss you!” as she rolls
In slow motion around the corner
And finally slides out of sight…
And in the back of my mind now a third voice,
Less kind, angry at the sight of her being dragged
Through the city like some captured, exotic beast,
Paraded for the baying crowds like Kong,
Pulled along by invisible chains, a snow white meteorite
Banished from the sky and sentenced to exile on Earth;
Not “A Heroine Come Home” at all,
But an engineered angel fallen from heaven
And thrown into an air-conditioned, floodlit cell,
Surely a spacecraft’s idea of Hell
After a lifetime of bathing in starlight,
Of feeling the icy kiss of Earthlight
On her bare shoulder as she rolled, pitched
And yawed above the bored, envious Earth…
One day I’ll cross the ocean to see her myself;
Pad pilgrim-softly through the Museum’s
Corridors and halls to stand before her and,
At least in my mind, fall to my knees.
Then those voices will whisper in my ears again,
Unheard by anyone else standing there
Clutching their cameras and bulging gift shop bags.
One will say “Thank you, for all that you were,”
The other will say “I’m sorry…”
© Stuart Atkinson 2012
