The Aeronauts

Ten centuries ago,
my ancestors built
the Zeppelin Fleet
to transcend a world
poisoned with war and disease.
A million engineers, scientists,
artists, aristocrats
won passage to the sky.
They raided royal treasures,
hoarded works of art,
stored plant seeds
and unborn creatures
onboard the airborne arks.
They abandoned a billion
to nuclear winter
and lived in Zeppelins
glowing gold above the clouds.

In a century,
the Weathermen said,
clouds would thin,
rain would fall
and cleanse the wounded world.
The Aeronauts bided time
in the stratosphere
while Earth froze
white beneath.

As a boy, I read books
about the expedition
a hundred years later,
when pioneers descended
to scout a landing site.
They struggled back and told
of a billion souls lost
below in the Ice Age.
Glaciers had razed cities
like wheat before the scythe,
burying a mile deep
the land they had hoped to farm.

Nine centuries later,
the world remains frozen.
The Aeronauts pilot my city
through the cold rare air.
I live crammed in a maze
of stairs, ladders, vertigo.
My bunk lies aft,
inside one of four giant fins
used in steering the Ship.
At night, I hear the fin shudder
while cutting the sky,
and, every so often,
the groan of gears
as the rudder swings
to port or starboard.
Then my heart quickens
and I dream of a sunrise
with morning dew on grass.
For when the rudder stops turning,
I will have lost my way home
forever.

Scott Speck
07/13/99