An Altair (First) Night by John Grey
October 2019| Utopia Science Fiction Magazine
My goosebumps are on the rise.
There’s someone out there.
Blue fog oozes through
purple tree and thicket.
I can make out subtle movements
in the eyes of
something green and stationary.
Mist clings to its face.
Not even the expressionless
is immune to the change
vapors does to its pores.
But the being
behind its gaseous masks
continues to elude
my long distance probing.
In the reptile pond,
shapes slip from bank to bank,
cling like scales
to heaps of mud.
A small rodent nibbles,
goes from feeding to sacrifice
in one snap of a jaw.
I have never felt more
like a small rodent.
I understand
the wince of sudden death,
how like the enigmatic face
of the alien,
it can penetrate a room.
With so much ambiguity,
mystery and sheer threat,
in the foreground,
I have a hard time being myself.
I thumb through a book,
information codified by experts
on life on other planets.
But these dry geniuses are hidden safely
in their words.
I have to deal with the creature that stares,
the beasts who feel no need
to hide, from me, their true nature.
Finally, the sun sets.
Darkness envelops the bizarre,
leaves me wondering at the window.
The creature hums softly.
The beasts bellow.
My book drops.
I close my eyes in dread.
Outside may not make for a better story
but it knows how to build to a release.
END
Originally published in the October 2019 issue of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine
About the Author:
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.