FROM A DISTANCE: POEMS FROM SPACE TRAVELERS

I am an incurable romantic
I believe in hope, dreams and decency
I believe in love,
Tenderness and kindness.

I believe in mankind.
I believe in goodness,
Mercy and charity

I believe in a universal spirit
I believe in casting bread
Upon the waters.

I am awed by the snow-capped mountains
By the vastness of oceans.

I am moved by a couple
Of any age – holding hands
As they walk through city streets.

A living creature in pain
Makes me shudder with sorrow
A seagull’s cry fills me
With a sense of mystery.

A river or stream
Can move me to tears
A lake nestling in a valley
Can bring me peace.

Leonard Nimoy

"High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
Magee was a teenage poet when he wrote "High Flight." Magee died in his Spitfire on December 11, 1941 at the age of 19, just a few weeks after penning the poem.


Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --
wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.