Directed Panspermia

by Peter Roberts

their sun grows hot:

their world will die.

is all space empty,

barren, beyond their

world, their dying world?

do they die alone?

or is other life out there?

they’ve looked for life,

longed for life, searched

for other minds.

but none

were found.

it saddens them:

they do not want

the only spark of life they know

snuffed out by chance.

they refuse to die alone.

millennium ships they could build

– a few, but they may find

no livable worlds. no guarantees

with ships so sparse, so few.

but small probes, smart probes,

primed with just the right microbes,

myriad probes for myriad worlds – these

they could disperse abundantly.

perhaps, in time, eventually,

intelligence would again emerge

& they will not have died in vain.