Ignition

My name—it matters not.

My identity is

Mankind itself, roaring

defiance to the universe.

My engines thrum with

power to send me into the empty

void that is interstellar space.

I am the dawn of a new age,

one in which men and women

begin to add their own stars

to the night, and their own

comets to score the heavens,

the dome that has shielded them

for thousands of years. They have

seen their heroes and their gods

in the sky for millennia, and soon

will journey among them.

The final engine now ignites.

I stretch my great wings of steel

and soar into the vast ocean, bearing

within me the first Vikings

of the second Space Age.

Nicholas Garino